




THE-*STOEY-OF 

MARY LYON 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 
FOR YOUNG READERS 


Titles Ready 

GEORGE WASHINGTON By Joseph Walker 


JOHN PAUL JONES 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
DAVID CROCKETT 
ROBERT FULTON 
THOMAS A. EDISON 
HARRIET B. STOWE 
MARY LYON 


By C. C. Fraser 

By Gene Stone 

By J. Walker McSpadden 

By Clare Tree Major 

By Jane Corby 

By I. N. McFee 

By I. N. McFee 

By R. B. MacArthur 

By H. O. Stengel 


Other Titles in Preparation 





























































































































































MARY LYON 

From an oil painting made from miniature now at 
Mt. Holyoke College 



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FAMOUS AMERICANS 

For^Young Readers 

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THEsSTOPY-OF 

MARYJYON 

BY 

H. OXLEY STENGEL 


RAKSE <& HOPKINS 


NEWYOI^C 

NY- 


NEWARK 

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Copyright, 1922 \ 

BY BARSE & HOPKINS 


PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. 


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PREFACE 


When the national electors for the Hall 
of Fame began balloting upon “Famous 
Women,” the first name that they chose was 
that of Mary Lyon. By their vote they recog¬ 
nized the fact that she had been foremost 
among the women of America for her serv¬ 
ices to other women. This girl was born in a 
quiet country home, in Massachusetts, a cen¬ 
tury and a quarter ago. In those days girls 
were not supposed to have any education be¬ 
yond the simplest studies, but her whole heart 
cried out for a better chance. Against preju¬ 
dice and opposition she worked her way 
through college, and at eighteen had begun to 
teach other girls. She devoted her life to 
founding Mount Holyoke College, a place 
where any girl could obtain an education at 
a low price. She was thus a pioneer in the 
higher education of women, and because she 
lived, other girls have found it easy to obtain 
the higher culture which was once forbidden 
them. 

Mary Lyon’s life story will prove an in¬ 
spiration to every other girl who reads it. 
Here it is presented in a clear, story-telling 
way, with all the charm of a bit of fiction— 
yet it is all true. Many details of her early 


PREFACE 


life are not known. For those which have 
been preserved in letters, manuscripts and 
biographies, diligent search has been made. 
We are also indebted to many friends for aid 
and encouragement. Among these are mem¬ 
bers of the faculty of Mount Holyoke Col¬ 
lege, who have most willingly and kindly sup¬ 
plied information and photographs. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. 

Beginnings .... 




PAGE 

9 

II. 

First Schooldays 




20 

III. 

The Young Teacher . 




26 

IV. 

Sanderson Academy . 




36 

V. 

Grasping an Opportunity 




47 

VI. 

A Teacher in Demand . 




65 

VII. 

An Academy for Girls . 




74 

VIII. 

Pioneering .... 




85 

IX. 

Campaigning for Funds . 




96 

X. 

Building Mount Holyoke 




105 

XI. 

Life at Mount Holyoke . 




120 

XII. 

Results of Pioneering 

. 



145 

XIII. 

“The Wonderful Woman” 

. 



159 

XIV. 

The End of a Consecrated Life 


173 















ILLUSTRATIONS 


Mary Lyon . Frontispiece 

From oil painting , made from miniature , 
now at Mount Holyoke College 

FACING PAGE 

Birthplace of Mary Lyon.16 

The Old Mary Lyon Building . . . 118 

First building erected for the pioneer 
college for women in America 

Mary Lyon Hall, Mount Holyoke . . . 160 

From a photograph 


THE STORY OF MARY LYON 


I 

BEGINNINGS 

“Please won’t you just say them out loud? 
I must know everything you do.” There was 
pleading in the earnest little voice. 

Seeing her brother with his books under his 
arm, the child had followed him into the 
orchard and had scrambled up on the stone 
wall beside him. Her short legs dangled in 
mid-air. 

“You wouldn’t understand a word. Be¬ 
sides, you won’t ever need to know as much 
as I do, Mary,” the boy explained. 

“Why won’t I, Aaron?” 

“Because you are a girl. It doesn’t take 
arithmetic and Latin to spin and weave and 
bake.” 

“But couldn’t I spin and weave and bake, 
if I knew ’rithmetic an’—an’ Latin?” 


9 


10 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

“Of course you could—but they are for 
boys and men.” 

“But why, Aaron?” Mary insisted. 

“Boys go to college or teach—sometimes 
both—and they need to know a very great 
deal.” 

“I’m going to college and teach too, then! 
What is a college, Aaron?” 

“A college is a big school where boys and 
men go after they know enough. They learn 
much more there. You can never go, Mary. 
You’re a girl.” 

“Oh, dear! Everything is for boys and 
men.” The child was in tears now. Seeing 
them, her brother hastened to comfort her. 

“Never mind, Mary, I’ll read my lessons 
aloud. I’ll teach you to write and figure, too. 
When you get a little bigger you are going 
to the district school with Electa, Jemima, 
Lovina and me.” 

“But I do wish I was a boy so I could go to 
college. Why don’t girls go, Aaron?” she 
persisted. 

“I don’t know, Mary, but if girls were busy 
learning, who would make the puddings and 


MARY LYON 


11 


pies? You want to help Mother, don’t you? 
There isn’t time for everything.” 

“I want to help Mother just a lot—but, 
Aaron, I want to know things, too.” 

Until the lessons were finished the child sat 
in rapt attention hugging one of the precious 
hooks which was such a mystery when she 
looked into its covers, and yet revealed so 
much to her brother Aaron. Some day she 
would study them for herself and, be able to 
write and “figure”—but never could she learn 
all that he would unless she, too, could go to 
college. When Aaron lifted her down from 
the wall and gave her his books to carry to 
the house while he went after the cows, she 
asked: “If there was more time could girls 
learn more, and spin and weave and bake too?” 

“I suppose so,” and Aaron laughed. “But 
run along now, little sister.” 

There was no one in the big kitchen when 
the child pushed open the door. She could 
hear the whir of the spinning-wheel at which 
her mother and sisters were busy. Quietly 
she went to the shelf where the books belonged 
and deposited them beside those which consti¬ 
tuted the family library. That there were 


12 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

other books in the world besides the Bible— 
the principal book in every New England 
home at the time—Watts’ Psalms, the lesson 
books, and a few volumes of poems, from which 
her parents often read—Mary did not dream. 
These seemed a rich enough store for any 
searcher after knowledge. 

But she did not linger with the books. She 
had a happy idea—one which would help her 
mother and sisters also. And how anxious 
Mary was to invent something that would help 
others! 

Dragging a chair in front of the great open 
fireplace, the little girl climbed up on it and 
reached on the mantel for the hour-glass. She 
was busy studying it when Mrs. Lyon en¬ 
tered the room. 

“Why, daughter, what ever are you doing!” 
she exclaimed. 

“I think I have found a way to make more 
time!” was the delighted response. “See, 
Mother, I can make the sand run back and the 
hours last ever and ever so much longer!” 

Poor little Mary was greatly disappointed 
when her mother explained that no amount of 


MARY LYON 


13 


turning back the sand in the hour-glass could 
really make more time. 

“But it is the use one makes of the hours 
which counts,” she told the child, “and we must 
never waste time which is so precious to us 
all.” 

When the family was gathered about the 
simple supper table that evening and thanks 
had been offered, Mary again broached the 
subject of knowledge. 

“Father,” she asked, “how soon may I be¬ 
gin to learn? Aaron has promised to teach 
me. 

“She wants to learn everything I do,” her 
brother explained, “and even go to college like 
a boy.” 

“Bless you, my little daughter, I only wish 
that could be possible,” Mr. Lyon sympa¬ 
thized. 

“If there was time to help Mother, too,” 
the child added wistfully. 

“So that explains her reason for wishing to 
lengthen the hours!” Mrs. Lyon drew Mary 
close to her. “There will always be time for 
lessons, even in such a busy household as this,” 
she comforted. 


14 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


“We’ll all teach Mary, can’t we, Father?” 
Electa begged eagerly. 

And so it came about that the earnest little 
pupil had loving teachers who marveled at her 
persistence and retentive memory. She first 
solved the mystery of the printed page while 
standing at her father’s knee with the family 
Bible for a text-book. Never was Mr. Lyon 
too weary after his many duties on the farm to 
teach his children or to tell them stories of 
the Indians, the battles of the Revolution, “so 
lately fought for the freedom of these Amer¬ 
ican States,” or of the struggles of their pio¬ 
neer forefathers. Little did he realize that 
tiny Mary, who was brimming over with the 
joy of living and absorbing knowledge as a 
thirsty plant does water, would some day be¬ 
come a pioneer also—that she would, in spite 
of as many and great difficulties as her fore¬ 
fathers encountered, blaze a trail through a 
dense forest—that others might follow with 
little difficulty. 

It was to the little farm on Putnam Hill— 
close to the tiny village of Buckland, Massa¬ 
chusetts, that Aaron Lyon, senior, had brought 
his bride, Jemima Shepherd, some years before 


MARY LYON 


15 


our story begins. The farm lay a good mile 
and a half to the west of Ashfield, where both 
had grown up. It was almost on the edge of 
the forest. From the rocky soil, by dint of 
loving labor, these two had wrested a living for 
themselves and their children. That they were 
poor, these children scarcely even realized. 
Nowhere but on a farm in old New England 
could money have counted for so little. There 
was ever enough to eat and to spare. Sheets, 
counterpanes, and clothing were the result of 
patient labor at the spinning-wheel and loom— 
and all the more valued because this was true. 
A new dress was, to Mary and her sisters, an 
event in their lives. It was treasured for Sun¬ 
day wear for many a day. A simple homespun 
garment it was, usually dyed blue, but no silken 
gown could have given more pleasure to the 
wearer. The sheep grazing on Putnam Hill 
furnished the wool from which it was made. 

There were no luxuries in the farm-house. 
Electric lights, steam heat and telephones 
were unknown. So also were many of our 
other modern conveniences. But, with the 
coming of dusk, candles were lighted, and 
throughout the long, cold winters there was 


16 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


ever a roaring log fire in the great open fire¬ 
place. One need not linger when preparing 
for bed in the unheated bedrooms and, once 
under the covers, it was delicious to sniff the 
icy air. There were stores of apples and nuts 
in the cellar all winter long and, with the com¬ 
ing of spring, the greatest treat of all for chil¬ 
dren, syrup and sugar from the tall maple 
trees which bordered the lane. Within the 
home there was a wealth of love. Never was 
Mr. Lyon known to speak an angry word and 
the mother was referred to by all her neigh¬ 
bors as “an angel of good works.” One of 
these came in one day begging the privilege 
of setting a plant of rare virtues in the corner 
of her garden, “because,” he said, “there it 
could never die.” 

And so it was that, just as the interior of 
the Lyon home contained such wealth of love 
and happiness, the little “rock-ribbed farm” 
yielded a wealth of beauty and romance. 
Roses, pinks and peonies lifted up their smil¬ 
ing faces in the “sweet little garden which 
needed only to be seen to be loved.” Pine 
trees, birches, elms and maples adorned the 
hillsides; dogwood, laurel, thorn-apple and 



BIRTHPLACE OF MARY LYON 














4 












MARY LYON 


17 


juniper clustered about the farm-house. In 
the orchard peaches, apples, and plums 
greeted spring with an offering of fragrant 
blossoms, and summer with a yield of delicious 
fruit. Among the rocks on the steep slopes 
wild strawberries grew in great profusion and 
richness—to be eagerly gathered into baskets 
fashioned out of grasses by the children. 

In winter the snow converted the Lyon 
farm and all the surrounding country into a 
dazzling fairyland. It was then that the fre¬ 
quent visits were made to Mary’s grand¬ 
fathers in Ashfield, in “that little sleigh, 
packed so snugly and gliding so gently.” 

It had been a cold winter’s day, Feb¬ 
ruary 28, 1797, when Mary Lyon was born. 
Hardly could she have made a wiser choice, 
had such a thing been possible, than the rich 
poverty which was her inheritance. Neces¬ 
sity has ever been the “mother of invention” 
and convention does not hamper growth on 
an isolated farm. 

It was in the spring of 1802 that Mary 
pleaded to be taught. Throughout the sum¬ 
mer her delight in books grew more and more 
keen. She could scarcely wait for the day to 


18 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

come when she would start to school. But she 
found it quite as much fun to sweep as to 
learn a new word. 

“You laugh at everything, Mary,” Jemima 
told her one day. 

“And she makes everybody laugh with her,” 
Aaron added. “She is just like a ray of sun¬ 
shine.” 

Not only did the child find much to amuse 
her in the simple happenings of every-day life 
on the farm, but she had a real gift for putting 
into words the things she found most enter¬ 
taining. This gift made her excellent com¬ 
pany for old and young alike. But she would 
get so full of her subject and talk so very 
rapidly as to become almost unintelligible. 

As soon as old enough to share in the many 
duties of the home and farm, each child was 
given special duties to perform. These were 
privileges to be desired, and never became irk¬ 
some. Mary quite envied her older sisters 
doing so much more than she to “help.” It 
was a proud day, therefore, when, having 
carded and woven a piece of cloth with very 
little assistance from those older, she was lifted 
up on old Dobbin and rode with Aaron to 


MARY LYON 19 

Pomeroy’s mill to have it dressed. Their way 
lay along Clessons River. 

“Can there be any place in the world quite 
as lovely, do you think?” she asked Aaron. 

“I dori’t know, but some day I’m going over 
the mountains and see,” replied the boy. 

“Oh, you’ll never leave me, will you, 
Aaron?” Mary adored her brother quite as 
much as he did his little sister. 

“Not for a long, long time,” he promised. 
“I’ll let you go to college though. If only 
you could take me with you!” she sighed. 


II 


FIRST SCHOOLDAYS 

From the top of Putnam Hill might be 
seen those rugged mountains, Greylock, 
Wachusett, Holyoke, and Tom—friends who 
were stanch and true. Mary would often race 
with her sisters and brother to the great rock 
ledges, sparkling with quartz and mica, from 
which these giants could best be viewed—to¬ 
gether with a host of lesser peaks. These 
stood guard eternally over the little kingdom 
of the hills—the sharp outline of their wooded 
crests might well have been drawn swords 
with which they would keep back all intruders 
from the outside world. It was in the valley 
to the north that Buckland lay. Even the 
little life the village displayed to the young ob¬ 
servers from above, fascinated and enthralled 
them. 

They did not play, these light-hearted, 
happy children, but their imaginations and in¬ 
stinct for adventure were none the less keen 
20 


MARY LYON 


21 


because such “frivolity” was frowned upon by 
their elders. Play was not held to be the 
happy means for relaxation that it is in our 
day. Games and sports—“amusements” of 
any sort—were banned. The pursuit of pleas¬ 
ure had become an end, rather than a means, 
with the gay and thoughtless, and was there¬ 
fore to be entirely suppressed by the serious- 
minded in old New England. 

Mary Lyon’s maternal great-grandparents, 
Chileab Smith and his wife, had been one of 
the two first families to settle in and found 
Ashfield, first called Huntstown. There 
being no Baptist meeting in any of the sur¬ 
rounding towns, he opened his house to pub¬ 
lic worship. When, through his efforts, a 
small church was built, he was its first leader 
having, at the age of eighty, been ordained a 
Baptist minister by his two sons. One of 
these sons succeeded him in the charge which 
drew its little flock from Buckland and Con¬ 
way as well as Ashfield. 

It was at this little church that Mary and 
her family worshiped. No day of the week 
held such charm for the child as Sunday. Its 
peace seemed to pervade the very hills. Spin- 


22 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


ning-wheel and loom were silent in the farm 
house and every task, not absolutely necessary, 
laid aside. Dressed in their simple best, the 
entire family would, on pleasant days, walk 
the mile and a half to Ashfield. Their way 
wound in and out among the hills. Through¬ 
out the long service in the little white church 
Mary would sit a silent, devout little figure. 
Afterwards there would be the greetings to 
relatives and neighbors in the churchyard be¬ 
fore the long walk home. During that walk 
Mr. Lyon would strive to explain to his chil¬ 
dren the difficult parts of the sermon, and to 
instill into their young minds high ideals. 

At last the day came when the district 
school was to open. Mary had talked of little 
else for days and was up with the first streak 
of dawn, eager to be off. She would have for¬ 
gotten her breakfast, had not Mrs. Lyon re¬ 
minded her that she must eat. 

“I think Mary will be a delight to her 
teacher. Mother,” said Aaron when they were 
at last ready to start; “she knows something 
to begin with.” 

“Yes, she has had more than one teacher 
now,” Mrs. Lyon replied, smiling. 


MARY LYON 23 

“I am going to help you just the same,” 
Mary whispered as she kissed her parents 
good-bye. 

The little red school-house had only boards 
for seats and the roughest of desks, but Mary 
found it all that could be desired. She was 
indeed a delight to both teacher and pupils 
with her eagerness and friendliness. Her 
bright blue eyes, rosy cheeks and curly gold- 
brown hair made her attractive in appearance 
as well. 

Throughout the fall and early winter 
Mary’s happiness was complete. But a day 
came which she was never to forget and which 
brought grief to many besides the children 
and their brave mother. It was about mid¬ 
day on the twenty-first of December, that the 
devoted husband and father was taken by death 
from the little mountain home. In the retired 
north room the little sorrowing group gath¬ 
ered about his bedside, while the winter sun 
shone brightly out-of-doors. To the end his 
thoughts were of them and his last words, fal- 
teringly spoken, were: “My dear children— 
what shall I say to you, my children? God 
bless you, my children.” The neighbors whis- 


24 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


pered, one to another, “We have lost a friend; 
the peacemaker is gone.” 

Then came that first strange, sad winter 
without the father. Even the fire seemed to 
blaze mournfully on the hearth. No child 
in that household ever forgot the prayers of 
the sorrowing mother for her fatherless chil¬ 
dren. Each day she offered them up through¬ 
out that long, bitterly cold winter. Of her, 
Mary lovingly wrote years afterwards: 

“Want in that little mountain home was 
made to walk so fairly and so gracefully 
within that little circle of means, that she al¬ 
ways had room enough and to spare for a 
more restricted neighbor. I can see that 
loved widow just as I did in my childhood. 
She is a little less than forty years of age and 
her complexion is as fair and her forehead as 
noble and as lofty as on her bridal day. . . . 
Now she is in that sweet little garden; now she 
is surveying the hired man and her little son 
on that wild romantic little farm. . . . But 
always she is to be found busy, amid her house¬ 
hold cares and amid the culture of the olive- 
plants around her table. In that little domain 
nothing was left to take its own way. Every- 


MARY LYON 


25 


thing was made to yield to her faithful and 
diligent hand. . . . The children of that 
household, thus abundantly supplied, never 
thought of being dependent or depressed. 
They felt that their father had laid up for 
them a rich store in grateful hearts and among 
the treasures which will never decay, and that 
their mother was continually adding to this 
store. I can now remember just the appear¬ 
ance of that woman, who had a numerous 
household to clothe, as she said one day, ‘How 
is it that the widow can do more for me than 
any one else?’ ” 


Ill 


THE YOUNG TEACHER 

The winter of 1802-3 became a sad but pre¬ 
cious memory in Mary Lyon’s life. The warm 
sun shone and the maple sap ran. The snow 
melted even from the peak of old Greylock. 
Colts frisked on the hillsides and little lambs 
in the meadow. Mary returned one day from 
a visit to Grandpa Shepherd’s to find Aaron 
plowing. 

“Oh, Aaron, please let me drop the seed!” 
she called. 

“If Mother is willing,” he returned cheer¬ 
fully. 

Mrs. Lyon smiled at the request. “You 
will get very tired,” she warned. 

“But it’s something I know I can do,” re¬ 
plied the child—and she was off to the fields 
to begin. 

What Mary began she usually completed. 
The sturdy little figure followed many a long 
26 


MARY LYON 27 

furrow before the summer was over and 
neither the hot sun nor the rocky fields 
daunted Tier. The shady path leading to 
Pomeroy’s mill also became very familiar. As 
she jogged along on old Dobbin, with the 
cloth to be dressed tied on behind her, she was 
thrilled by the beauty of all about her. Lacy 
ferns, delicately tinted wild flowers, sparkling 
waters, singing birds,—she knew and loved 
them all. She was an out-of-door creature 
herself and the same sunshine which wrought 
magic on the corn she planted gave her un¬ 
bounded energy. Her hearty laugh often re¬ 
echoed from one hill to another. She had 
never seen a city, but country and village life 
offered much to be enjoyed to the full. 

The corn towered far above Mary’s head 
when school time once more arrived. But 
alas! the little red building a mile from Put¬ 
nam Hill where her school days had begun so 
happily was not to be reopened. For some 
good reason it had been decided that the 
school should be located yet another mile from 
the Lyon farm. During the milder weather 
Mary trudged the two long miles with her sis¬ 
ters and brother but, of necessity, her attend- 


28 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


ance was irregular throughout that and suc¬ 
cessive winters. This was a keen disappoint¬ 
ment to the child. She could write and “fig¬ 
ure” now, but that did not satisfy her. She 
learned “by leaps and bounds” in spite of 
missing school so often. 

“I must work every problem in the arith¬ 
metic and then learn Latin,” she insisted. 

“You will,” Aaron returned with convic¬ 
tion. “I think your mind can run even faster 
than your legs now.” 

“How fortunate you are, little daughter, in 
living now when girls can go to school as their 
brothers do,” Mrs. Lyon told Mary. “It 
wasn’t so very long ago when a girl had to sit 
on the doorstep and hear the arithmetic les¬ 
son through the window, if she was as anxious 
to learn as you are. Only odd moments were 
given to girls by the teachers.” 

“But why. Mother?” 

“It wasn’t thought necessary to know how 
to figure to become a good home-maker, dear. 
Now that girls teach in the district schools— 
when men cannot be had—they must be 
taught.” 

“They should take girls in colleges, too. 


MARY LYON 


29 


Mother,” insisted the child. “I want to go 
farther than a ‘dame school.’ ” 

“So have some other girls, daughter, but 
that cannot be. There was Lucinda Foot, in 
Connecticut, for example. At twelve this 
child had prepared with her brothers for 
Yale.” 

“And didn’t she go?” 

“No,” replied Mrs. Lyon, “but she stood an 
examination and received from President 
Stiles a certificate stating that ‘she was fully 
qualified, except in regard to sex, to be re¬ 
ceived as a pupil in the freshman class of Yale 
University.’ Later, she did study the full col¬ 
lege course, and, with President Stiles for her 
tutor, learned Hebrew.” 

“Oh, I’m so glad!” Mary exclaimed. “On 
the whole she learned just as much as her 
brothers then, didn’t she?” 

“Yes, I think she did—but it was because 
her parents had money enough to have her 
educated. A few seminaries take girls now, 
too, but”—Mrs. Lyon sighed—“it costs a 
great deal to send girls off to school.” 

“If only Buckland or Ashfield had a sem¬ 
inary,” said Aaron, “I am sure Mary would 


30 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

find some way to attend when she gets big 
enough.” 

“Maybe I can make money teaching like 
Electa’s going to do,” suggested the child, “and 
go to a seminary when I grow up. I guess you 
will be all through college though, Aaron, be¬ 
fore I can start.” 

But Aaron was never to get to college. His 
duty kept him on the little farm which he loved 
quite as dearly as Mary did—in spite of his 
desire to go over the mountains and see some¬ 
thing of the world. 

Electa had three successful years as a 
teacher in the little school at Buckland before 
she married and moved with her husband to 
another state. In rapid succession changes 
came after that. By the time Mary was twelve 
Jemima and Lovina were also married. In 
order to be nearer a school, Mary had spent 
more than one term with relatives in Ashfield 
and, for a time, had stayed with neighbors in 
Buckland helping with the home work for her 
board. Her thirst for knowledge was not in 
the least quenched when she had learned every¬ 
thing her teachers themselves knew. Never 


MARY LYON 


31 


had one! of them had a pupil with Mary’s 
capacity to learn. 

“I should like to see what she would make, 
if she could be sent to college,” said one of 
her teachers. 

Like her mother’s, Mary Lyon’s nature was 
deeply religious. It was while attending school 
in Ashfield that she climbed on the crooked 
trunk of an ancient beech tree behind the school 
house and, during recess, told the pupils gath¬ 
ered about her “the way to salvation.” 

There were no Sunday Schools. Between 
services the young people gathered under the 
trees in the grove or in the churchyard. Some¬ 
times the conversation would grow light. 
Greatly distressed, Mary would then walk 
quietly off by herself. “I cannot understand 
how they can talk of such things on God’s holy 
day,” she told her mother. 

It was in 1810 that another wedding made a 
very great change in the household on Putnam 
Hill. Mrs. Lyon remarried and moved inside 
the lines of Ashfield—taking with her Rosina 
and little Freelove. It was very hard to be 
parted from her mother and small sisters, but 
Mary, who was now thirteen, insisted that she 


32 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


was quite equal to remaining and keeping 
house for Aaron. He offered her a dollar a 
week which she could save toward her “acad¬ 
emy fund.” 

“Making puddings and pies will help to¬ 
ward learning,” laughed Mary, “if learning 
isn’t needed for baking. Hurrah for puddings 
and pies!” 

She entered into her home-making with joy¬ 
ous zest. Baking and sweeping for two was 
not hard for Mary Lyon. She still found time 
to help Aaron on the farm, and to add to her 
fund by spinning and weaving. There were 
also frequent visits to her mother’s. 

One day Mary returned from Buckland 
with the exciting news that a brick house was 
in the course of construction. “I’m going to 
learn how to make bricks!” she exclaimed. 
“The son of the builder has promised to teach 
me.” 

“Of all things!” returned Aaron, “if you 
aren’t the funniest girl, Mary! Why do you 
want to make bricks?” 

“Why, I’m just curious to learn everything, 
I guess.” 

“And brick making is one of the few things 


MARY LYON 33 

around here that you haven’t tried. All right, 
go ahead and make bricks.” 

And Mary did, little knowing that Buck- 
land’s first brick house would play any part 
in her future life. 

A year passed with Mary at the helm in the 
farm-house. And then it was that Aaron came 
home with “exciting news” for Mary. “You 
won’t need to keep house for me much longer,” 
he told her; “and you couldn’t help loving my 
bride if you tried.” 

But Mary Lyon rejoiced only because 
Aaron was happy. In secret she shed many 
tears. She had never supposed the time would 
come when her brother would not need her. 
She had always needed him and had only feared 
a long separation when he would be at college. 
Yet, she was the one who was saving to go 
away to school, instead. Aaron would not miss 
her so much if he had a wife. Perhaps it was 
best after all. She did not mean to be selfish. 

Mary’s heart was quickly won. Aaron’s 
wife grew very dear indeed to her. Mary 
taught several terms at Shelburne Falls a few 
miles away, and received seventy-five cents a 


34 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

week and board for her services at Aaron’s 
home. 

“I shall never teach again,” she told her 
brother one day to his great astonishment. 

“What has happened?” he asked. 

“I am a failure. I laugh too much and can’t 
be severe when something funny happens. 
Laughing isn’t good discipline.” 

Poor Mary! Because she was little more 
than a child herself and brimming over with 
life and good spirits, possessed of a keen sense 
of humor and devoted to children, she was 
quite sure she was never meant to teach. 

“You have never failed before when you 
began anything, Mary,” Aaron reminded her. 

“That is because I never tried anything I 
couldn’t do, if I stuck to it long enough. 
Maybe I haven’t stuck to this task quite long 
enough,” and she flashed Aaron one of her 
radiant smiles. “I’ll teach till I prove that I 
can!” 

“That sounds more like you,” returned her 
brother. 

There were still many tears shed in secret, 
but Mary returned to the schoolroom filled 
with remorse that she had allowed herself to 


MARY LYON 


35 


become discouraged over the very work which 
seemed, of all others, the most important to 
her. 

“But never, never will I prove the teacher 
Electa was,” she sighed. “Everyone is saying 
that now, I know.” 

She might not look ahead. 


IV 


SANDERSON ACADEMY 

Never did Mary give up her plan of going 
on with her studies. There wasn’t any ques¬ 
tion in her mind. But the “fund” had grown 
slowly, while she had grown rapidly. 

She was nineteen when the Reverend Alvan 
Sanderson founded Sanderson Academy in 
Ashfield. Many of the villagers distrusted the 
venture and disapproved of a school which 
must depend upon the payment of tuition for 
its support. But Mary Lyon had no misgiv¬ 
ings. Her chance had come at last! Gladly 
did she offer all of her savings, together with 
two quilts, her table linen and other household 
treasure, in exchange for board and tuition. 

Tall and awkward of gait the country girl 
was when she descended upon the Academy. 
She was dressed in blue homespun with a draw¬ 
string at the neck. Her hair was short and 
curly. Her manner was crude. To daugh¬ 
ters from homes of culture and means, she was 

36 


MARY LYON 


37 


a laughing-stock; but not for long. They 
were quick to judge by appearances—which 
were not to the advantage of the girl from the 
hills, who had contended with poverty and 
made her own clothes. How were they to know 
that this girl had ambitions exceeding any of 
theirs, and that she proposed to realize them 
by the simple and effective means of persist¬ 
ent and hard study? 

It was shortly after the opening day that 
Mary came into her own. In study after 
study she excelled every pupil in the school. 
Not one could keep up with her. Her mind 
never tired. If she could not “make time” as 
she had hoped to do when she experimented 
with the hour-glass years before, she could 
use what there was to the greatest advantage. 
Health and strength were her wealth and she 
had earned these on the farm. She could steal 
hours from sleep for learning and not suffer 
any ill effects. Nothing but thoroughness gave 
her any satisfaction. She scorned to skim. 
She had a good memory and was thankful for 
it, but she insisted upon reasoning out every 
step she took. 

It was on a Friday afternoon, as Mary was 


38 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


about to leave to spend the week-end on the 
farm, that the principal assigned her her first 
lesson in Adam’s Latin Grammar. It was the 
custom in those days to permit beginners in a 
language to make its acquaintance as best they 
could without any introduction on the part of 
the teacher. 

“You may omit all other studies, Miss 
Lyon,” the principal told her, “and devote 
your time to the first lesson.” He thought 
that now, at least, this extraordinary pupil 
would find difficulties enough to hold her 
energies in bounds. He had a surprise in 
store. 

Mary trudged home with the precious Latin 
book under her arm. She joyously greeted her 
brother’s little family and then retired to her 
own room that she might at once begin her new 
study. On Monday she was in her place in the 
Academy as usual. 

It was afternoon before the Latin class was 
called upon to recite. Mary quietly took her 
place beside the others on a central bench in 
the large recitation room. She was called 
upon to answer a question—and then occurred 
the event of which all Ashfield talked for many 


MARY LYON 


39 


a long day. With scarcely a mistake from 
beginning to end, Mary Lyon declined and 
conjugated the whole Latin grammar! The 
principal was amazed. Every pupil sat spell¬ 
bound in admiration. No one had ever heard 
of such a thing before. 

“How ever did you do it?” her seat-mate, 
Amanda White, asked in an awed tone later. 

“I studied on Sunday,” was Mary’s con¬ 
fession. “I traced out the likenesses and dif¬ 
ferences among the declensions and conjuga¬ 
tions. I can commit anything to memory 
quick. And as to the rules of syntax, they are 
so much like those in English grammar, that 
it did not take long to learn them. So you 
see, it was no great feat after all.” 

Mary Lyon had admired Amanda White 
from the first time she saw her. She was a 
pretty, brown-haired girl whose every move¬ 
ment expressed grace. Her home was in the 
big white house that stood on Ashfield’s main 
street. Her father, Squire White, was a mem¬ 
ber of the state legislature and a trustee of 
Sanderson Academy. They first became 
acquainted when returning from a lecture at 
the church. Impulsively Mary asked this 


40 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

lovely girl to sit with her at the Academy. 
The friendship which began that day was to 
mean much to both girls. 

“I loved her from the first moment of our 
acquaintance,” Amanda wrote afterwards, 
“and felt that her heart was made for friend¬ 
ship ere I had been one half hour in her so¬ 
ciety. . . . Her frank, open face invited con¬ 
fidence, and a mutual feeling of interest was 
at once awakened. . . . She requested me to 
take a seat with her. I did, and pursued the 
same branches so far as I could keep up.” 

It was Amanda who first learned why Mary 
Lyon would make such haste along the road 
of learning. She could not afford to loiter if 
she would. It took too long to save for one 
year at the Academy. She could not remain 
for another. And so there had been double 
reason for the remarkable progress—eagerness 
to learn and shortness of time. 

“And yet,” Amanda told her parents, “she 
is ever ready to lay aside her books and lend a 
helping hand to those of weaker intellect.” 

“She is all intellect,” many said of her; “she 
does not know that she has a body to care for.” 

It was when Mary was about to leave San- 


MARY LYON 


41 


derson Academy because “the fund” was all 
used up, that Amanda White went to her 
father. 

“Isn’t there something you can do to keep 
her?” she begged; “the Academy would not 
be the same place without Mary Lyon. All 
the students love her and she is my dearest 
friend. Besides, Father,” she added, “it 
doesn’t seem right that she, of all others, should 
have to go—and just because she hasn’t any 
more money.” 

Gladly did the trustees vote such a student 
free tuition. Mary was surprised and de¬ 
lighted. “It is all your doings, Amanda 
White, I know!” she said. But she insisted 
upon having certain duties assigned to her in 
exchange for the tuition. Mrs. White invited 
her to come and live at the big white house 
where she could be near the Academy and be 
company for Amanda. Both she and the ge¬ 
nial squire had taken a great liking to the 
bright-eyed school-girl who had so modestly 
carried off so many honors. 

And so it was that Amanda’s home became 
Mary’s adopted one. Together the two girls 
occupied a large room on the second floor look- 


42 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


ing out over the beautiful lawn. Here, under 
the influence of gentle, high-bred Mrs. 
White, life was very pleasant indeed. 

Mary Lyon had been too engrossed in “doing 
things” all her life to trouble very much about 
any method in doing them. At the White 
home she began to realize that there was a dif¬ 
ference in the way things should be done. She 
became conscious of her own crudities, and 
cheerfully acknowledged that she needed help 
in correcting them. Often Amanda would 
lovingly chide her for her own good, for, as she 
herself said, she had a feeling that Mary Lyon 
was fitting herself for some important station. 

44 She was very likely,” Amanda would say, 
“to leave off some article or to put on one 
wrong-side-out. She was one of the unfortu¬ 
nate ones whose wearing apparel seemed 
doomed to receive the contents of every over¬ 
turned inkstand or lamp, but she met every 
such accident with the same good humor and 
pleasantry she manifested on all and every 
occasion.” 

Gradually she became less awkward and 
more heedful of her dress, but she continued 
to be fearfully absent-minded and absorbed in 


MARY LYON 


43 


her studies. “Oh,” she would exclaim to 
Amanda, “do not let me go to breakfast with¬ 
out my collar!” 

There in the White home foundations were 
laid which later made it possible for Mary 
Lyon to mingle among her kind with social ease 
and natural cordiality. Never did she affect 
mannerisms—she was too honest and pos¬ 
sessed too much sound sense for that. She 
could never display the graces of a “fine lady” 
but she would retain the wholesome simplicity 
which was her birthright and which will ever 
distinguish the truly great. No one rejoiced 
over her good fortune in being taken into the 
White household more than did her mother. 

“It will mean much to you, my daughter, to 
know life as it is lived at the Squire’s,” she 
told Mary. 

“It cannot mean more than my dear 
mother’s example,” Mary replied. 

“The companionship of such cultured peo¬ 
ple as Amanda and her family is always de¬ 
lightful,” continued Mrs. Lyon; “they can give 
you many advantages that I could not, and 
you should be very grateful to them.” 

“Oh, I am—and a sore trial too,” laughed 


44 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

Mary. “But they are so very kind and so pa¬ 
tient with my lapses,” she added, sobering, “I 
can see how it must hurt them to have me so 
careless.” 

That year was a profitable one for Mary 
Lyon aside from her work at the Academy, but 
it was not yet that she had her real intellectual 
awakening. Sanderson Academy’s methods 
undoubtedly strengthened the memory but, as 
Mary herself said afterwards, “It was one of 
those schools where they do nothing but study 
and recite. You just learned what was in the 
book.” But she declared to the end of her life 
that her mental energies were aroused here 
and her teachers imparted impulses which 
never died out in her. “Many who would 
otherwise never have had any access to any¬ 
thing worthy the name of literary advantages 
received there the rudiments of an education. 
In that quiet retreat among the hills the in¬ 
tellect was stirred, the taste refined, and in¬ 
tensity given to the desire for knowledge. To 
mind and heart that institution was what the 
mountain airs are to the physical powers.” 

It was Elijah Burritt, well-known to the 
nineteenth century because of his work “The 


MARY LYON 


45 


Geography of the Heavens,” who taught 
Mary to calculate eclipses. She was greatly 
interested in making an almanac with the help 
of a classmate. Mary’s maps showed the care 
she bestowed upon their making—as well as her 
real skill. Always she continued to put her 
whole self into everything that she did. That 
was her way. 

There was great excitement when she and 
Amanda were chosen for parts in a drama. 
There was also to be an exhibition of the work 
done by the pupils, dialogues, an oration on 
the character of Aaron Burr, and another en¬ 
titled “The Tyranny of Custom.” Away into 
the night the two girls recited their parts in 
the privacy of their own room. They must be 
perfect as characters in “Christianity in In¬ 
dia.” It was a missionary play and therefore 
doubly interesting and important. 

Mary Lyon looked upon missions as one of 
the marvelous things of the age. No subject 
could be of greater importance, to her mind. 
Could she have known that Aaron’s wee daugh¬ 
ter Lucy, whom she adored, would one day 
set sail for China with such a noble object in 
view, she would have thrilled at the very 
thought. But she did know that joy years 


46 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

later, after having had her niece with her both 
as pupil and teacher. Her influence was to be 
felt upon many a young life that offered itself 
for the foreign field. 


V 


GRASPING AN OPPORTUNITY 

The second year at Sanderson Academy 
ended. Mary Lyon was twenty-one. She 
felt that she must return to teaching, for which 
she was now better fitted in every way. Yet 
still her object was to teach others that she 
might herself go on learning. She had not 
yet begun to have her thirst quenched—rather 
had it increased, if that were possible. 

She would have returned to the farm that 
she might be with her precious Aaron and his 
adorable babies while she taught nearby. 
They would have insisted that she belonged 
there and have given her her old place in the 
household. But the time had come when Aaron 
was to “go over the mountains and see. ,, He 
and his little family were moving to western 
New York. 

Mary was stunned at the news. Something 
seemed to snap inside of her, and the hurt of it 
was almost unbearable. Aaron must not see 

47 


48 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


how she was suffering. Alone she roamed 
over the rocks of Putnam Hill recalling all 
the happy days they had spent there together. 
Now he, too, was going and the home in which 
she had been born was to be broken up. 

But even as she sorrowed, the hills seemed 
to give her renewed strength. She responded 
to their beauty. She felt God’s presence as 
she never had before. It was His will that 
things should be ordered so. A strange hap¬ 
piness crept into her heart. She was able to 
bid even her brother a cheerful good-bye al¬ 
though she felt—for the second time—an 
orphan. Into her sister-in-law’s hand she 
slipped a paper on which was written the fol¬ 
lowing verse from a well-known old hymn of 
a hundred years ago: 

“Not one sigh shall tell the story, 

Not one tear my cheek shall stain; 

Silent grief shall be my glory— 

Grief that stoops not to complain.” 

Part of her time Mary now spent with her 
mother and sisters. Sometimes her school 
would lie too far away and she would “board 
around.” A term as schoolmistress meant a 


MARY LYON 


49 


term as a student. Finally, she made up her 
mind to take her scant inheritance from the 
farm and go for a term to Amherst Academy. 
This later became Amherst College. It was 
then one of the leading academies in New 
England. But before she entered Amherst 
she determined that her handwriting must be 
improved. 

Daniel Forbes, “little holy Daniel” the 
boys nicknamed him because of his mild 
manners and the absence of a birch rod in 
maintaining good discipline, was a noted mas¬ 
ter in the community. He was teaching a 
“writing-school” in Buckland. With charac¬ 
teristic eagerness Mary decided to benefit by 
his knowledge. He arrived one morning at 
the little carpenter shop which served as a 
class-room, to find “Miss Lyon” sitting with 
the young pupils. 

“You are a good teacher of penmanship. 
My handwriting is very bad. I must improve 
it. Will you teach me?” Mary explained in 
a breath. 

“I shall be most happy to do so,” the school¬ 
master replied. 

And so it was that for weeks Mary labored 


50 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


over her attempts to produce writing resem¬ 
bling a fine steel engraving. It was irksome 
to her very soul, but such script was deemed 
to be a necessary part of a good education. 
She would have preferred to express herself in 
her handwriting as in other ways. But when 
Master Forbes set her to copying Latin she 
demurred. Someone might give her credit for 
greater learning than she actually possessed. 
Henceforth the penmanship specimens were 
“pure English.” Mary settled for her tuition 
by hearing the lessons of the younger pupils. 
The carpenter shop belonged to the father of 
the boy who had taught her to make bricks. 

Mary Lyon’s arrival at Amherst caused 
quite as much of a stir as when she entered 
Sanderson Academy. “Her homespun ap¬ 
parel, her extraordinary scholarship, and her 
boundless kindness, were about equally con¬ 
spicuous.” Chemistry claimed her almost un¬ 
divided attention. She was to be found in the 
laboratory early and late. 

Although she could spend but the one term 
at Amherst, Mary was not compelled to aban¬ 
don science. That summer she taught at Con¬ 
way, the little village close to Ashfield. Here 


MARY LYON 


51 


she made her home with the Reverend and 
Mrs. Edward Hitchcock. The former was 
then pastor of the church and one of the trus¬ 
tees of Sanderson Academy. Later, Dr. 
Hitchcock became president of Amherst Col¬ 
lege. With such a tutor, Mary made rapid 
strides in science. Mrs. Hitchcock, in turn, 
instructed her in drawing and painting. 

“I don’t deserve such good fortune,” she 
repeatedly maintained. 

“Anyone who works as hard as you do 
doesn’t have ‘good fortune’—they merely reap 
what they sow,” she was told. 

It was about this time that Love sought out 
Mary Lyon. She had had her dreams that he 
would—what maiden has not? But for rea¬ 
sons of her own, whether concerned with self- 
sacrifice or her own happiness, she sent him 
from her. If she ever regretted his going, she 
kept her secret locked in her own heart. There 
was “pioneering” ahead for her to undertake. 
She was preparing. 

Throughout that busy year Mary never lost 
an opportunity to run over to Ashfield to see 
her mother and sisters and Amanda White. 
Letters arrived from Aaron telling of the do- 


52 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


ings of the little family, and many tears were 
secretly shed over them. 

One day Amanda arrived in the highest of 
spirits. “I have great news,” she called out on 
spying Mary working over some arithmetic 
papers under the trees on the lawn. 

“I think I know what it is,” Mary returned, 
“you are going to Byfield!” 

“How did you guess?” Amanda exclaimed, 
“but, Mary Lyon, whatever is the matter?” 
Mary had suddenly burst into tears. 

“I am the most ungrateful friend,” Mary 
sobbed; “of course I am happy over your go¬ 
ing to Dr. Emerson’s school. It will be won¬ 
derful for you. I met Squire White and he 
told me it was all settled. But, oh, I was fool¬ 
ish enough, when we used to talk of going so 
far and to so famous a school, to think that 
somehow I could arrange to go too!” 

“You must go! Oh, Mary, that would be 
wonderful!” 

“It would be wonderful—but I can’t think 
of going.” 

“And why not? Father will help you.” 

“I can’t let him do that,” Mary replied with 
a sigh. 


MARY LYON 


53 


But in the end Mary was prevailed upon to 
accept a loan. She was to repay it later from 
her teaching. If they had been going to 
Europe—which was an adventure attempted 
only by daring travelers in those days—they 
couldn’t have been more excited. The leave- 
taking was the hardest. Again Mrs. Lyon was 
grateful that her daughter should have such 
an opportunity. 

“Of course I shall write and tell you what we 
do,” Mary said, “but it will take a long, long 
time for the post to reach you.” Boston 
seemed as far away from Ashfield, as Chicago 
would seem to-day. 

Although the stage route running between 
Albany and Boston passed through Ashfield, 
Squire White would not hear of the girls 
traveling in this way—even were he to accom¬ 
pany them. He would drive them himself and 
see them comfortably established. Perhaps 
he was justly proud, too, of his “turnout”— 
the first light spring wagon driven to a team 
of horses in that part of New England. 

With their trunks in behind and a generous 
basket of lunch at their feet, the beaming 
travelers waved their handkerchiefs as long as 


54 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

the party of relatives and friends could be dis¬ 
tinguished in the distance. Then they became 
interested in the sights of the road. The 
Squire was occupied with the horses. 

Remembering that trip later, Mary humor¬ 
ously described it to some students: 

“You can hardly understand, young ladies, 
what a great thing it was to get to Byfield. 
It was almost like going to Europe now. 
Why, it took us three long days to go from 
Ashfield to Byfield. Good Squire White, 
who was one of my fathers, took me in his own 
carriage with his daughter. I was really a lit¬ 
tle homesick the second night, when I realized 
that I was so far from home. You will laugh, 
and you may laugh, for I am going to tell you 
that the next day I was very homesick. We 
lost our way and I did not know that we should 
ever find the noted Byfield, for the good peo¬ 
ple near Boston did not seem to know very 
well where it was. And can you believe it, 
young ladies, Miss White and I both cried! 
I cried just as hard as I could; and I really 
think I outcried my good friend whose father 
smiled upon us. But we found Byfield, for 
he did something better than weep; and when 


MARY LYON 55 

he went back to Ashfield he told our friends 
that he had left us in a good place and that 
we could come back the next fall.” 

It was twenty-one years before the opening 
of the first normal school in Massachusetts 
that the Reverend Joseph Emerson estab¬ 
lished his academy. His object was to pre¬ 
pare young ladies to be intelligent teachers. 
To Mary and Amanda, Byfield Academy was 
a revelation, and its founder the greatest of 
teachers. For the first time Mary felt that 
she was being directed and curbed in her 
study. 

“Your mind is active and powerful,” Dr. 
Emerson told her, “but it is undisciplined. It 
is thinking, close thinking, that makes the 
scholar. . . . Words acquired in a parrot-like 
fashion cannot be intelligently used and are 
but lumber in the mind.” 

But Dr. Emerson did not consider a girl’s 
mind any less strong than her brother’s. He 
led his students to read English literature and 
to revel in it. Pope, Milton, Gray, Cowper, 
Goldsmith, Thompson and Young became in¬ 
timates of the girls. History lectures were 
travels in many lands. Dr. Emerson’s search- 


56 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

ing questions compelled thought and impressed 
facts upon the memory. “Education is to fit 
one to do good,” he told a class one day. To 
Mary the words seemed to mark a turning 
point in her life. “He who is not willing to 
be taught by the youngest of his pupils is not 
fit to have a pupil,” he said. 

There were days when Mary and Amanda 
felt very far from home and decidedly home¬ 
sick, but working under such a man as Dr. 
Emerson gave them great pleasure as well as 
profit. 

“Our beloved teacher would approve of girls 
attending college, I know,” Mary said to 
Amanda one night. 

“He wouldn’t leave much for them to re¬ 
quire there,” returned Amanda, “if he could 
only teach us everything he knows.” 

“Oh, dear, how greedy I have been in snatch¬ 
ing at everything, without thinking whether I 
was gaining useful knowledge,” sighed Mary. 
“I have been like a sponge—always absorbing 
but never taking on a polish as granite does.” 

It was soon after their arrival at Byfield 
that Mary wrote her mother the following let¬ 
ter: 


MARY LYON 


57 


“My dear Mother: 

“I feel that this summer is, or ought to be, 
peculiarly profitable to me. Much depends 
upon it. Such a spirit of piety is mingled 
with all Mr. Emerson’s instructions that the 
one thing needful is daily impressed on our 
minds. From our scientific pursuits he is ever 
ready to draw practical and religious instruc¬ 
tion. Oh, my mother, I know you would be 
delighted to witness our devotional exercises 
both morning and evening, to hear him read 
and explain the Scriptures, to hear such pious 
counsel from his lips, and to unite with him in 
his fervent prayers at the throne of grace in 
behalf of his scholars. He renders every reci¬ 
tation attractive. Never have I attended one 
from which I might not gain valuable infor¬ 
mation, either scientific, moral, or religious. 
We have Sabbath lessons to recite every Mon¬ 
day morning. 

“You ask if I am contented, if I am satisfied 
with my school? I am perfectly so. I can 
complain of nothing but myself. 

“Your loving daughter, 

“Mary.” 


In writing to her parents Amanda said: 
“Mary sends love to all; but time with her 
is too precious to spend it in writing letters. 
She is gaining knowledge by the handfuls.” 


58 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

Again Mary wrote in a note to her mother— 
when the post had failed to bring an answer 
to her last letter as promptly as she hoped: 

“Each passing day carries my heart home 
to you, my dear parent, and all my other 
friends, till I can no longer refrain from writ¬ 
ing. Did you know how much my heart dwells 
on her who loves me with a mother’s love, some 
of you, ere this, would have filled a sheet for 
my perusal. I long to see you; but I will sup¬ 
press my tender emotions while I have re¬ 
course only to my slow, feeble pen as a poor 
substitute for rapid conversation at the meet¬ 
ing hour of a mother and daughter—conversa¬ 
tion which stops not for thoughts.” 

The “filled sheet,” arriving on the next post, 
brought with it a glimpse of home. 

Mary was very serious in her thoughts—as 
well as in her work—that wonderful summer. 
She was learning more from her teacher than 
from her books—as often happens in the life 
of every student. Dr. Emerson was distantly 
related to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ill health 
had forced him to give up his church, but his 
pupils were the gainers because of this. He 
had many novel ideas for that day. One of 


MARY LYON 


59 


these was that it was a great mistake to neglect 
the body in the training of the mind. He did 
not believe that delicacy of feeling went only 
with a frail constitution—as was popularly 
held. Body, mind, and soul were all to be 
cared for and trained. He urged young 
women to “know themselves.” 

Because of the shortness of her time Mary 
had convinced her own conscience that she had 
a right to study on Sunday and to neglect 
her body in many ways. She was not even at¬ 
tending service. But Dr. Emerson’s talks had 
their effect. 

“Never again will I allow my curious mind 
to cause me to neglect the deeper needs of my 
soul or the welfare of my body,” she told 
Amanda. 

Gradually Mary gained such poise that those 
who had known her when she gave way to 
every feeling, felt the strength of her person¬ 
ality. No longer did she weep as readily as 
she smiled. Self-control was very difficult for 
an impulsive nature like hers, but not impossi¬ 
ble. She was stirred by many emotions when 
she wrote Freelove under the date of August 
11 , 1821 : 


60 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

“My dearest little Sister: 

“I have many facilities for improvement, but 
they only increase my obligation. I believe 
I have never before realized the solemnity of 
living so much as I do this summer. I often 
think that, if possible, it is more solemn to live 
than to die. What important consequences 
may depend upon a single word, or the most 
trifling deed. With how much care and de¬ 
liberation should we regulate all our conduct, 
and even our every thought. This requires the 
most vigorous exertion of all our faculties; 
nay, more, we need constant instruction from 
heaven, and the daily guidance of the Holy 
Spirit. “Your sister, 

“Majiy.” 

“The study of language, at least one lan¬ 
guage, is the study of studies, with which all 
others are necessarily and most intimately con¬ 
nected,” said Dr. Emerson. His stress on the 
value of English affected all of Mary Lyon’s 
later practice. 

It would have been quite impossible for 
Mary to become too serious and sober. She still 
abounded with enthusiasm and good spirits. 
Rather was her seriousness an aid to more 
complete happiness than of the sort to make 
her go about with a long face. She was learn¬ 
ing life and its values. She was growing up 


MARY LYON 


61 


into a lovable, balanced woman. As at San¬ 
derson Academy, she made many friends and 
was never too busy with her own studies to 
assist one of them. 

“No mind in the seminary has ever equaled 
Miss Lyon’s in power,” Dr. Emerson told an 
assistant. 

Mary and Amanda were by no means the 
oldest students at Byfield. It was another 
remarkable feature of the seminary that many 
of the young ladies were quite grown in point 
of years. 

“We have a clergyman’s widow from Maine 
who is past thirty,” Amanda wrote her father. 
“There are students from all but one of the 
New England states. Dr. Emerson feels so 
strongly that we have much to give one an¬ 
other, that he urges us to visit about and not 
to spend all of our time as book-worms. This 
is delightfully stimulating, especially so when 
each one is trying to fit herself to be of real use 
in the world. Our beloved teacher cries out 
against ‘literary misers, who have so much to 
read they have no time to act.’ It would be 
hard to imagine our Mary becoming one! 
She has too much interest in people and in all 


62 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


going on about her for that. With her knowl¬ 
edge and energy she is going to do great things. 
Of that I am sure. Never have I hoped to 
keep pace with her.” 

In the family where Mary and Amanda 
hoarded at Byfield and shared a room as they 
had at the White home, there was a delicate 
little boy of ten years. He won Mary’s heart 
at once and, with all her other duties, she man¬ 
aged to find time to teach him. 

“I have so many good things here,” she told 
him, “that I simply must share them.” Yet 
those grammar lessons might easily have 
caused the volunteer teacher to regret her 
offer! Patiently and cheerfully she labored 
over them, even when her pupil was driven to 
tears by his failures. All his life he remem¬ 
bered Miss Lyon’s kindness and unfailing good 
humor. 

Grammar had ever been one of Mary 
Lyon’s own greatest problems. In a letter to 
Rosina about this time she wrote: 

“You know I have always found difficulties, 
doubts and inconsistencies in grammar; and 
the most I have done in that branch is to mul¬ 
tiply these difficulties on every hand. But I 


MARY LYON 


63 


must not be discouraged at this. Mr. Emer¬ 
son remarked to us that nothing yet has been 
brought to perfection; and, as there are diffi¬ 
culties in every pursuit, if a person sees none, 
it argues his almost entire ignorance. Dr. 
Emmons observed once to Mr. Emerson that 
he often found it much harder to make a pupil 
discover a difficulty, than to remove it when 
discovered.’’ 

Mary’s friendship-book which she kept at 
Byfield gave her much pleasure. Into it went 
the signatures of all she wished to remember, 
together with bits of verse or sentiment. One 
name, that of Z. P. Grant, signed to a quota¬ 
tion from the Bible, stood out from all others. 
It was faultlessly inscribed, for one thing, and 
Miss Zilpah P. Grant was Dr. Emerson’s as¬ 
sistant for whom Mary had a tremendous ad¬ 
miration. Miss Grant was stately and digni¬ 
fied. But she was not unapproachable. She 
grew very fond of Mary Lyon and a friend¬ 
ship was formed, which did not end when 
Mary and Amanda left Byfield Academy. 

Squire White returned at the end of the 
term to convey the young ladies home. He 
professed to stand in great awe of their vast 
learning. Philosophy, Speculation, Human 


64 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


Reason, Logic, System, Theory, Metaphysics, 
Disputation—all of these had been a part of 
Dr. Emerson’s curriculum. “Be not fright¬ 
ened at their sound,” he had warned his pupils, 
“these can never harm you so long as you keep 
clear of error and sin.” 

The trip home was more easily made than 
when the roads were strange and, instead of 
tears on the part of Mary and Amanda, there 
was constant praise of Dr. Emerson and his 
academy. 

“I can, never, never thank you enough for 
assisting me,” Mary told the Squire. “Not for 
anything would I have forfeited the opportu¬ 
nity for such real improvement.” 


VI 


A TEACHER IN DEMAND 

No sooner had Mary Lyon returned from 
Byfield than she received a most unexpected 
offer. It was to become assistant in Sander¬ 
son Academy. Why, there never had been so 
much as a female teacher there before, and its 
head was, as was to be expected, a college 
graduate. 

“Try Miss Lyon,” Squire White had urged. 

“Instead of a college man?”—there was con¬ 
sternation among the trustees. But, in the 
end, they took the Squire’s advice. 

Just seven years had passed since Mary had 
declared herself a failure as a teacher—but 
had resolved to try again! She was finding 
that her forte lay especially in teaching girls. 
She understood them and their problems. She 
loved them and they loved her. The attend¬ 
ance at Sanderson Academy that winter 
pleased the trustees. 

“What did I tell you?” Aaron wrote. “I 

65 


66 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

knew you would prove that you could teach— 
as well as spin and weave and bake. I am 
very proud of my sister.” 

It was a satisfaction to Mary to work in the 
Academy where she had had her first real 
chance. Here, too, she proved her unusual 
powers for imparting knowledge to others—as 
well as for absorbing it herself. Her love of 
learning was contagious. It was “fatal” for a 
pupil who thought she already knew enough 
to come into a classroom where Mary Lyon 
was. As far as she could, she conducted her 
recitations by means of topics—a method said 
to have been first used by Dr. Emerson at 
Byfield. 

Miss Grant had not failed to write her for¬ 
mer pupils, and her letters had been at all times 
most helpful to Mary. She and the assistant 
at Byfield held many ideas in common. Espe¬ 
cially was this true in regard to “system” in 
adopting school courses. Poor Mary ap¬ 
proved of this from sad experience! To be 
“up” in one subject, beyond her class in an¬ 
other, and yet never to have been instructed 
in a third, had more than once been her own 
experience—as when she conquered Adam’s 


MARY LYON 


67 


Latin grammar almost over night. System 
was what most appealed to her, perhaps, in a 
college course. She wanted girls to have that 
as well as advanced learning. 

She had been at Sanderson Academy two 
years when a letter came from Miss Grant 
which sent Mary in post haste to seek out 
Amanda White. She was beaming and eager 
to impart her news. 

“I feel that this is a dream, rather than sober 
reality,” she told her friend, handing her the 
letter. 

“So Miss Grant is to open her school and 
wants you to assist her!” exclaimed Amanda. 
“Of course you will accept?” 

“Of course I wish to do so. Think of it, 
Amanda! An academy for girls and con¬ 
ducted by women! Who would have dreamed 
such a thing would be possible when we were 
children! Times are surely changing.” 

“Indeed they are!” agreed Amanda. 

“The best part of Miss Grant’s school will 
be a graded course of study right through,” 
Mary went on. “It will give thoroughness— 
and oh, how this is needed!” 

“You are going, then?” Amanda insisted. 


68 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


Her friend shook her head. “I do not know. 
I cannot decide for myself. Sanderson Acad¬ 
emy is where I have been principally educated 
and I have received frequent favors from its 
trustees, as you well know, Amanda. Noth¬ 
ing could induce me to leave Rev. Sanderson, 
did not this new school seem a field especially 
adapted to my capacity. Here, I am among 
friends and I feel it a privilege to aid in carry¬ 
ing out Rev. Sanderson’s benevolent designs. 
His Academy has been a silent and powerful 
means of doing good. . . . May the Lord di¬ 
rect my course. I cannot. I would not choose 
for myself.” 

It was several days before the important de¬ 
cision was made. Mary admitted that she had 
spent two sleepless nights; then a remarkable 
calm had come over her. She wrote to Miss 
Grant telling her of the pleasure it would be 
to work with her and of her feeling that this 
indeed seemed her most useful field. But not 
yet could she give her answer. 

At last it came about that Miss Lyon was 
to assist her friend Miss Grant at the new 
school. Everything had been weighed in the 
balance and the scales (figuratively) tipped 


MARY LYON 


69 


that way. That the school was an experiment, 
added to the zest and the responsibility she 
felt. Together the two planned the graded 
studies and tried out their own and others’ 
ideas. The buildings were new; the plans for 
work, new; and the results of those plans new 
also! Adams Academy proved its founders’ 
ability. 

As the climate of Londonderry made it im¬ 
practical to conduct the school during the win¬ 
ter months, Mary’s services were eagerly 
sought at that season by the Ruckland Acad¬ 
emy. “Such a thing never entered my head,” 
she laughingly told her mother. “And it is 
in the very brick house which I helped to 
build!” 

Mary’s classroom in the brick house was on 
the third floor. In each corner of the great 
room was an open fireplace. Board benches 
ran around the walls. Wherever she taught 
now, her fame brought girls from great dis¬ 
tances—even from beyond the state. The 
cramped quarters could not comfortably ac¬ 
commodate Buckland’s students. The village 
decided it must have a new and roomy build¬ 
ing. “Graham’s Hall” sprang up almost like 


70 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


magic and housed the school more adequately. 

It was during the first winter after her re¬ 
turn to Buckland—where even teachers came 
to study Mary Lyon’s methods—that Aaron 
returned for a visit. He tried to persuade 
Mary to go back to New York with him. 

“Our children and others are at the age 
when they must go to school and there is no 
good teacher to be had,” he told her. “Surely, 
Mary, you would not feel that your talent was 
being thrown away, if you came where you 
were so greatly needed as out in Chautauqua 
County?” 

“Oh, dear, no! Quite the contrary, Aaron,” 
she returned. “I often feel that if a teacher 
would really make herself count she should 
teach in a remote rural school.” 

“Then you will come back with me?” Aaron 
was overjoyed. 

Mary shook her head sadly. “You can never 
know what this answer costs me, Aaron, but 
it must be No. It is my duty to go on at 
Adams and Buckland. It would be a delight 
to go to you and yours. Surely you know 
that?” 


MARY LYON 71 

“Yes, my brave sister, I do. I shall not 
urge you again.” 

When Aaron returned to New York it was 
Rosina who accompanied him. 

Freelove was also beginning her early strug¬ 
gles as a teacher. Mary’s thoughts were often 
of her baby sister while at Londonderry that 
summer. It was after a letter from her, telling 
of her “trials,” and also shortly after the sad 
news had come of the death of Electa’s hus¬ 
band, Mr. Moore, that Mary w r rote the fol¬ 
lowing letter: 


“Londonderry, July 7, 1824. 
“My dear Freelove: 

“Although I am pleasantly situated and 
have no more cares and little daily trials than 
I should expect, yet it would be pleasant to 
spend an hour with one of my dear sisters, to 
whom I could tell all my heart. The fact that 
no two of our family, unless it be our brother 
and our sister Rosina, are spending the sum¬ 
mer together, awakens emotions peculiar and 
rather gloomy. Ever since the sad news came 
of Brother Moore’s death, I have thought 
much of my brother and sisters. I have seemed 
to review twenty years in relation to ourselves. 
... I see this family, that about twenty 
years ago were prattling children, united and 
happy in the arms of their fond parents, now 


72 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


scattered over four different states of the 
Union, and some of them seven hundred miles 
apart! I see the eldest [Electa], in whom we 
all placed confidence as a counselor and friend, 
and to whom we are in some degree indebted, 
separated from her friends, carried by Provi¬ 
dence into the lonely wilderness, almost alone 
and unpitied, where no one of us can give her a 
cheerful smile or a word of consolation. I well 
remember how much energy and animation she 
possessed when she used to spend her days in 
teaching. . . . 

“You wrote in a somewhat gloomy strain 
but I hope it was only momentary. You will 
do well, dear Freelove, to try to gain the con¬ 
fidence of your pupils, and to make them see 
the reasons for your requirements. Do not say 
too much to them at one time. I think it best 
to devote some attention to their behavior, even 
if they don’t study so much. If your older 
pupils should be disposed to trouble you, 
perhaps it may help to talk with each one out 
of school, and entirely alone. By doing this 
once in a while, you may reach their feelings 
and lead them to a right determination, when 
you otherwise could not. Try to lead them 
always to speak the truth, and then let them 
know that you depend on their word. 

“Let me hear not only from yourself, but 
also from my other friends. Separation does 
not lessen the interest I take in their welfare. 
When I think of the older members of our 


MARY LYON 


73 


family, I also think of their children. I have 
the same kind of interest in their prosperity 
that I have ever had for that of their parents. 
Sometimes I feel that it would be a privilege 
to live, if I could only make myself useful 
to the children of my brother and sisters.” 


VII 


AN ACADEMY FOR GIRLS 

It was Mary’s opinion, by this time, that 
teaching was really the business of almost 
every useful woman. It did not matter if 
she was not to make it her life work. There 
was too often a period of aimless idleness be¬ 
tween school life and marriage which was much 
better filled. “Then, too,” she said, “ a woman 
capable of teaching and having taught well, is 
ready for any other sphere of 'usefulness.” 
She was pleased that both Rosina and Free- 
love should teach, and also Hannah White, 
Amanda’s younger sister. To Hannah she 
wrote from Londonderry: 

“The regulations of this school are such as 
to enable us to have much system and order. 
This regular system is meant to give our pupils 
faithful and attentive habits. They understand 
their course is marked out and whatever is as¬ 
signed to them is to be accomplished. Com- 

74 


MARY LYON 


75 


position, you know, is one of the most trying 
exercises. Rut even in this we have not had 
an instance yet in which any young lady has 
been in the least delinquent. In some respects, 
perhaps, this school meets our wishes more 
fully than any I have seen. 

“Miss Grant has adopted a plan to prevent 
whispering which has been very successful. 
After leading her pupils to feel the impor¬ 
tance of being truthful, and stating facts as 
they are, she requires each to bring in a weekly 
ticket with her name attached, stating whether 
she has, or has not, made any communication 
in school during the week, either by whisper¬ 
ing or by writing, or in any other way equally 
suited to divert the attention. We have some 
young ladies who have succeeded in controlling 
themselves entirely, and probably none who 
have not passed some weeks without a failure 
on this point. Miss Grant, of course, would 
not adopt this plan unless the scholars evinced 
a conscience both enlightened and lively as 
to the distinction between truth and false¬ 
hood. 

“The prospects of this school are very prom¬ 
ising. . . . The location here not being favor- 


76 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


able for a winter school, the Academy is only 
open thirty weeks in the year.” 

Always she was introducing new methods 
into her teaching. The summer months found 
her working these out with Miss Grant; the 
winter, at Buckland or Ashfield. The two 
towns were keen rivals for her services. San¬ 
derson Academy elected Miss Lyon its pre¬ 
ceptress in 1826—proving that Squire White’s 
opinion of her ability was shared by his fellow 
trustees. His own daughter, Hannah, was 
chosen as assistant. 

“It is to system that I owe my success,” 
Mary told everyone. But her friends knew 
that it was her skill and personality that ac¬ 
counted for much of it; nay, more, her faith 
in others and her trust in God. 

“There is nothing in the universe that I 
fear,” she once said, “but that I shall not know 
all my duty or shall fail to do it.” 

Ashfield now wanted all of her time; so, 
also, did Buckland. Miss Grant’s school was 
moved to Ipswich, Massachusetts, a quaint and 
thrifty sea-coast town where weather condi¬ 
tions favored a winter session. Miss Lyon 
was urged to become assistant principal of 


MARY LYON 77 

Ipswich Seminary and to devote her whole 
time to this work. 

“You should remain in Franklin County 
where you are so greatly needed,” her friends 
argued. “Either Buckland or Ashfield is 
where your duty lies.” 

“This is the field where you must feel that 
you can do the most real good,” Miss Grant 
wrote. 

Franklin County’s ministers’ association 
passed resolutions requesting her to remain. 
They even went so far as to try to persuade 
Miss Grant to move west! 

“You hazard your health by dividing your 
energy between two places,” they told Mary. 

“Your usefulness cannot be as great when 
giving only part time,” came the warning from 
Ipswich. 

“I feel as if my heart was being torn in 
pieces,” she exclaimed. “Each assures me that 
I can do my best work only by acting on their 
advice!” 

The claims of home and family were very 
strong indeed. The call to “carry on” with 
Miss Grant in the work which the two friends 
had planned together, was likewise compelling. 


78 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


At Derry-Ipswich her ideals for the proper 
education of girls were being put to the test. 
She had grown indispensable to the school, 
Miss Grant assured her. And so it came 
about that the winter of 1829-30 completed 
Mary’s service as a successful teacher in the 
hill country where she was born. Her whole 
time was now to be given to Miss Grant’s 
school. 

Too often girls were still sipping at learn¬ 
ing as bees do from the flowers. They flitted 
about here and there gathering a little honey 
in the form of French phrases, piano “pieces,” 
an ability to sketch simple landscapes, and 
other “finishing” accomplishments such as 
the singing of touching ballads and embroid¬ 
ering intricate samplers. That is, girls from 
homes of means, did. It was far from Mary’s 
intention to underrate these “embellishments.” 
But, just as she would wish to give girls other 
diet than cake and candy, she saw the need 
for solid intellectual food. Such food would 
give them real strength for the needs of their 
lives. Always had she regretted that her own 
girlhood could not have had a little more of 
the “trimmings.” 


MARY LYON 


79 


“I have sometimes felt,” she wrote from 
Ipswich, “that I would have given six months 
of my time when I was under twenty, and 
defrayed my expenses, difficult as it was to find 
time or money, could I have enjoyed the privi¬ 
lege of learning vocal music that some of our 
pupils enjoy.” 

She was ever grateful to Mrs. Hitchcock 
for the lessons in painting. 

There followed four years when Miss Lyon 
gave her entire time to teaching at Ipswich— 
four wonderful years for her and her fortunate 
pupils. Without any thought of harm result¬ 
ing, Miss Grant was able, during this period, 
to take a long and much-needed vacation cov¬ 
ering a year and a half. Her assistant con¬ 
ducted the seminary during her absence. Miss 
Grant, capable and commanding to a remark¬ 
able degree, with a brain of unusual power, 
was physically very frail. It was said of her 
that she had “an intellect to govern a state 
or adorn the bench,” and she was referred to 
as “an American Queen,” but it was Mary 
Lyon who saved her strength in every possible 
way. 

Her work at Ipswich, especially when Miss 


80 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


Grant was present, gave her the keenest pleas¬ 
ure. She was devoted to her chief and gained 
much wisdom from the older woman. 

At Londonderry the seminary had had a 
teaching force of four. Now there were nine 
on its staff. Students came, not alone from 
all over the United States—as far as its limits 
extended—but from other countries. Teachers 
greatly outnumbered girls who were ambitious 
to become teachers. 

“It has often numbered among its pupils,” 
Miss Lyon wrote home, “those who have been 
employed as teachers of almost every grade, 
those who had, as they supposed, completed 
their education years before.” 

Ipswich scholars became in great demand in 
every state in the country. Many times, 
schools were not opened until teachers could 
be secured who had been trained there. The 
seminary was thorough. Too many studies 
were never given at one time and the one fixed 
rule was: “Review! Review! Review!” 

It was impossible to house the numbers of 
students in the central buildings in the little 
seaside town, but the same hours were kept 
ynder many roofs. System again! Yet the 


MARY LYON 81 

government was in rather than over the stu¬ 
dents. 

It was amazing the number of subjects Miss 
Lyon taught and taught well. Mental arith¬ 
metic was a hobby. History was a delight. 

“In whatever department of literature or 
science she is engaged, a looker-on would sup¬ 
pose that to be her favorite pursuit,” declared 
Dr. Hitchcock. 

“Anything may become interesting which 
we think important,” she would insist. 

Miss Lyon never overlooked the fact that 
everyone of us is different. But she would 
have each student remember that her acts af¬ 
fected the whole student body. “For the 
good of all,” she would say. Beyond the 
school lay state and country. Miss Lyon 
would train citizens, not selfish individuals. 
She knew that some brains could not master 
what would be easy for others. “We expect 
your best, not what is good for another, but 
yours,” would encourage one and goad an¬ 
other toward greater effort. 

The simple and joyous religion of the 
teacher reacted on her students. Her smiling 
eyes and buoyant manner, rather than her 


82 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

words, carried a message. She walked by 
faith. She lived with her Maker. That she 
was a Calvinist, few knew who did not also 
attend her church. Unusual as it was, she 
laid little stress on religious differences in 
seeking to lead her students to make the 
“Great Decision.” 

“God wants you to be happy; He made you 
to be happy!” she would exclaim. Healthily 
she warned against denying one’s self good 
that good might result. “You have no right 
to give up your happiness because you are 
willing to do so,” she told her girls. 

Among the students at Ipswich Seminary 
was a young lady “of gracious elegance,” 
Hannah Lyman. To her later befell the dis¬ 
tinction of being recommended by Miss Grant 
(then Mrs. Banister), for the position of first 
“lady principal” of Vassar, under President 
Raymond. 

Sincerity and modesty were impressed on 
all students going forth from Derry-Ipswich. 
“Don’t use high-sounding terms with regard 
to your school; don’t call it an Academy until 
it is one,” Miss Lyon would tell them. “Don’t 


MARY LYON 


83 


talk about your great responsibility, but rather 
feel it in your heart.” 

A few times it became necessary to expel 
pupils. Miss Lyon did not hesitate in her 
duty, but never was she severe or angry. “I 
am sorry for you,” she would say, “but the 
good of the institution requires it.” 

Among the servants at Derry-Ipswich was 
a woman past forty years of age, who could 
neither read nor write. Miss Lyon discovered 
this and also that she was ashamed of her igno¬ 
rance and eager to learn. At once it was ar¬ 
ranged that private lessons would be given in 
the assistant’s own room. Gratitude was a 
rich payment for this extra tax on time and 
strength. 

Mary Lyon spent the summer, after Miss 
Grant’s return, studying at Rensselaer School, 
in Troy, New York, the first institute of tech¬ 
nology in the country. Her courses were in 
chemistry and natural philosophy. 

A letter from Professor Eaton, enclosing a 
circular describing the course in chemistry in 
which “students are to be divided into sections, 
not more than five in a section,” and to include 
“at least one section of ladies,” convinced her 


84 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


that her time would be well employed. “These 
sections are not to be taught by seeing experi¬ 
ments and hearing lectures according to the 
usual methods,” the circular stated, “but they 
are to lecture and experiment by turns, under 
the immediate direction of a professor or a 
competent assistant.” 

“Would it not be well for you to spend the 
term here?” Professor Eaton had inquired. 
“You would then be well prepared.” 


VIII 


PIONEERING 

The years which Miss Lyon spent at 
Ipswich brought their share of sorrows as well 
as joys. In 1832—within exactly one month 
of each other, on August 18th and September 
18th—occurred the deaths of Rosina and 
Lovina. The former, who was nearest Mary 
Lyon’s age and, as she wrote, “a kind of 
darling among us all,” was yet a bride, having 
married after going out to New York with 
Aaron. Lovina, Mrs. Daniel Putnam, fell ill 
after nursing her husband. Freelove went to 
Hartford to look after the five young children 
who lost their father and mother within a short 
time of each other. 

It was during the summer of 1833 that Miss 
Lyon took the first real vacation of her busy 
life. This “noted and truly wonderful 
woman” was now greatly in need of a change 
herself. She resolved to travel. Her plans 

85 


86 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

included visits to Aaron and her other rela¬ 
tives. 

Starting from Boston very early in the 
morning, she traveled the eighty miles to Nor¬ 
wich, Connecticut, by stage. Here she 
boarded a night boat for New York. 

Throughout that entire delightful trip Miss 
Lyon kept a diary—jotting into it the inter¬ 
esting sights and happenings. And they were 
many. No sightseer had more energy or 
keener eyes. In New York and Philadelphia 
she found much to interest her besides the 
shops. But never did she allow anyone to 
persuade her that she should give Sunday over 
to any other occupation than in going to 
church and quietly walking about. She vis¬ 
ited Princeton and West Point. She called 
upon Emma Willard at her seminary at Troy. 
This interested Miss Lyon very much. Its 
building was imposing. It housed under one 
roof both school and students. This seminary, 
like Derry-Ipswich and Miss Beecher’s school 
at Hartford, was carrying out plans for edu¬ 
cating girls which made it justly famous—but 
with a great difference. Mrs. Willard wished 
“to provide suitable instruction” for girls but 


MARY LYON 


87 


she hastened to explain that she had no idea 
of “the phantom of a college-learned lady.” 
That was just what Mary Lyon did have! 

In Troy Miss Lyon also visited hospitals, 
prisons and porcelain works. She was present 
at commencement at Rensselaer School. A 
day and a half were given to Niagara Falls. 
She was deeply moved by their wonders. In 
a letter to Miss Grant she acknowledged that 
she had been prepared to be disappointed, but 
that Niagara would be stored away among her 
most treasured memories. 

“Much depends upon the manner of visit¬ 
ing the Falls,” she said. “The American side 
should by all means be visited first, and I think 
the visit on the Canadian side should be re¬ 
served for the conclusion. All the little broken 
prospects and parts of views should be taken 
from the American shore and Goat Island, and 
sufficient time should be allowed for the mind 
to expand and enlarge and prepare to take in 
the greatness of the overwhelming view on the 
Canadian side.” 

The greatest pleasure that summer brought 
was the visits to her relatives. How long she 
had been planning these! Now she must get 


88 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


acquainted with half-grown nephews and 
nieces who had once been her beloved babies. 
There were new faces also and “Aunt Mary” 
found them winning her as completely as their 
older brothers and sisters had. She had de¬ 
lightful talks with one small nephew in par¬ 
ticular, who desired to be with his new aunt 
above all things. 

Her travels took her as far west as Detroit. 
She returned to Ipswich in the fall greatly 
refreshed in mind and body. 

She taught one more winter at Ipswich 
Seminary. It was her last winter of teaching 
—but not her last in the schoolroom. She 
now had other plans. She wrote Freelove 
during the summer of 1834: “I am about to 
embark in a frail boat on boisterous sea. I 
know not whither I shall be driven, nor how I 
shall be tossed, nor to what port I shall aim.” 

Never had Mary Lyon been willing to begin 
anything she did not feel herself fully able 
to complete. She was going to do a most dar¬ 
ing thing and because she had the faith in her 
own powers to carry it through. Years be¬ 
fore, Dr. Emerson had said: 

“Many fail of accomplishing what they un- 


MARY LYON 


89 


dertake for want of knowledge of their own 
weakness, and many do not undertake what 
they might perform from ignorance of their 
own strength.’’ 

What this pioneer now proposed to do was 
not an unheard-of thing. In fact, it had been 
done two centuries before in America. But 
it had been done only for men. Mary Lyon 
still believed that women might have as much 
done for them. Like card houses, schools for 
girls had been built up—only to collapse. 
This was still happening. Their lives de¬ 
pended upon securing a certain number of 
pay pupils. Let a popular teacher make a 
change and, often as not, the school failed. 
More than once had this occurred in Miss 
Lyon’s teaching experience. Buckland Acad¬ 
emy was unable long to survive her going. 
What she proposed to do, was to set out to 
secure an endowment for an institution of 
higher learning for women. This was the 
novel venture! This the pioneer’s under¬ 
taking! 

Back in 1819 Mrs. Willard had asked the 
New York state legislature for aid in found¬ 
ing permanent seminaries which would then 


90 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


be “secured against adventurers of fortune.” 
In her “Address to the Public,” she gave her 
“plan” but it did not make clear whether her 
idea was for schools which should belong to 
the state, or be partly a “public trust.” 

The people had endowed Harvard and 
other colleges. The people were to be asked, 
two hundred years later, to do this thing for 
the benefit of women. Miss Lyon felt the 
time was ripe and that she was but an instru¬ 
ment in bringing about what was so sorely 
needed. For a long time her heart had 
yearned towards girls in “the common walks 
of life,” girls who, like herself, had been un¬ 
able to afford the very thing they most longed 
for and needed—higher education. It was her 
dearest wish that, in securing an endowment in 
order that an institution for women might live, 
it would also be made possible for girls from 
such homes as hers had been to afford to at¬ 
tend it. 

To Miss Grant she wrote: 

“My thoughts, feelings, and judgment are 
turned toward the middle classes of society. 
This middle class contains the main-springs 


MARY LYON 91 

and main-wheels which are to move the 
world.” 

At Ipswich trustees leased Miss Grant her 
building rent free. She supplied the teach¬ 
ers and most of the apparatus, as well as the 
library. Miss Lyon had offered to help her 
friend equip a chemical laboratory and her 
offer had been accepted. She had done this 
out of the munificent salary of six dollars a 
week at the beginning of her work there. 

“Never teach the immortal mind for 
money,” she pleaded. “If money-making be 
your object, be milliners or dressmakers, but 
teaching is a sacred employment.” 

“If you can put into operation a perma¬ 
nent school on right principles, you may well 
afford to give up your life when you have 
done it,” Dr. Joseph Emerson told Miss 
Grant. It was with this goal in view that 
Mary Lyon set forth in her “frail boat.” 

The plans for this lasting institution for 
“females” were to provide a seminary build¬ 
ing, containing a large hall, laboratory, read¬ 
ing room, library, a number of recitation 
rooms and a roomy dormitory where each stu¬ 
dent would have her own separate room. 


92 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


These buildings were to be set in a campus 
containing several acres of ground. Books 
and apparatus were to be furnished. Sound 
scholarship would be insisted upon; social serv¬ 
ice training provided; broader viewpoints en¬ 
couraged. All money matters would be in the 
hands of “an agent appointed by the trustees, 
to whom he should be responsible.” 

For a time both Miss Grant and Miss Lyon 
thought the proper location for this perma¬ 
nent establishment would be at Amherst. 
The students would then have the advantage 
of attending certain of the lectures at Amherst 
College. “It would be a start,” Mary Lyon 
urged. “This is the way everything is done 
in New England.” 

But New England did not readily take to 
the plan. It was not at all sure that it would 
be a good thing. Worse than those who op¬ 
posed the whole idea were those who showed 
utter indifference. All hope of starting at 
Amherst was given up for good. 

“The public as such,” Miss Lyon declared, 
“know nothing of any consequence about the 
subject, and care less than they know!” 

In spite of her own enthusiasm and her 


MARY LYON 


93 


every effort to interest others, she began to 
feel that it would be many years before the 
plans could be worked out. 

At this time she had reason to feel that she 
was well acquainted with every kind of school, 
public and private, which admitted girls. 
Her long apprenticeship had included over¬ 
crowded district school houses with pupils of 
all ages and mental capacity; private “finish¬ 
ing” schools; higher schools—which did not 
last—and where the teachers were terribly 
over-worked. Miss Catherine Beecher began 
her famous school modestly in a room over a 
store in Hartford. It was then moved into 
the basement of a church where, as she said, 
“nearly one hundred young ladies had only 
one room, and, most of the time, no blackboard 
and only two teachers.” She had only 
“amused the leading gentlemen of Hartford,” 
when she asked their help in securing funds 
for a better building. But Hartford’s women 
had listened to her plea and a roomy building 
had been the result. Her school won fame 
even in Europe, but her health broke under 
the strain of doing so much herself. She could 
not go on alone. Now she had proposed to 


94 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


Miss Grant that Hartford Seminary and 
Ipswich Seminary be united. Dr. Lyman 
Beecher approved his daughter’s idea. But 
Miss Grant, while anxious to do this, declined 
in the end because of her very uncertainty 
that even the one school would endure. Hart¬ 
ford refused to consider endowing the insti¬ 
tution. Miss Beecher’s seminary soon “was 
no more.” 

“My successor,” she wrote Miss Grant, 
“though an able teacher, was a man who had 
a family to support, and could not use all the 
school income, as I had done, to retain the 
highest class of teachers.” 

It was about this time that Oberlin College 
was founded in Ohio. Mary Lyon was greatly 
interested in its “revolutionary program.” It 
was co-educational. She gave of her money 
to it, but could not feel that it was doing very 
much toward raising the standard of women’s 
schools. It also offered a special “ladies’ 
course” which did not provide regular college 
work. Monticello Seminary, in Illinois, in¬ 
sisted that Miss Lyon become its head. She 
was tempted to go out to the quicker moving 
West, but thought better of it. 


MARY LYON 


95 


“Improvements in education seldom make 
any progress eastward,” she reasoned. “New 
England influence is vastly greater than its 
comparative size and population would indi¬ 
cate. It is the cradle of thought. New Eng¬ 
land mind carries the day everywhere, and the 
great business is to get New England con¬ 
science enlightened and accurate.” 

She decided on a course of action. “This 
may seem a wild scheme,” she wrote her 
mother, “but I cannot plead that it is a hasty 
one.” What she set herself to do was to in¬ 
terest the whole New England community, 
beginning with the country population, in the 
plans for establishing the proposed seminary 
somewhere in New England. 


IX 


CAMPAIGNING FOR FUNDS 

Miss Lyon was still acting head of Ipswich 
when she set out in the spring of 1834 to cam¬ 
paign actively for the founding of the perma¬ 
nent seat of learning for women. Circulars 
were sent out and Miss Lyon made house-to- 
house visits. In personal talks, as in no other 
way, she could bring people to her point of 
view. Joyously she would explain the need 
for such an institution and what it would 
mean to young women. 

“I have come to get you to cut off just one 
little corner of your farm and give it to your 
wife,” Miss Lyon laughingly told a farmer. 
“Your wife will invest the corner in a semi¬ 
nary for young ladies—one within your own 
daughter’s means.” 

When she visited ladies she would ask: “If 
you wanted a new card table or a new dress 
very much, you would have no trouble in se¬ 
curing the money for it, would you?” 

96 


MARY LYON 97 

They gave gladly far more than she often 
expected. 

When she gave public talks many were de¬ 
lighted with her ideas. She began to have 
hope that it would not take years to realize 
her dream. The first thousand dollars was 
given in less than two months. Only women 
were asked at first. The teachers and pupils 
at Ipswich Seminary gave more than a quar¬ 
ter of that first thousand. 

Twelve gentlemen met Miss Lyon in her 
own parlor at Ipswich on the 6th of Sep¬ 
tember, 1834. They came, as one of them, 
Mr. David Choate said, “to inspect a few small 
seeds which Miss Lyon was wishing to put 
into the ground somewhere and sometime, al¬ 
lowing us to have something to say as to the 
place and time and so forth, yet not wholly 
surrendering anything entirely up to any, and 
still allowing us the innocent fancy of think¬ 
ing ourselves for the time being co-workers 
with her.” 

Miss Lyon insisted that these gentlemen, 
among whom was Professor Hitchcock, were 
truly co-workers. They formed a committee 
to stand for the enterprise until it should have 


98 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


a permanent charter such as many men’s col¬ 
leges had. With these friendly men back of 
her, Miss Lyon put all her strength into mak¬ 
ing a success of the effort. Often she would 
be so worn out that she would sleep through¬ 
out a day and night like one in a trance. 

“Now I am as fresh as ever,” she would say 
after such a period. 

The Hitchcocks now being at Amherst, 
Mary Lyon spent part of her time at their 
home. 

“Here I read, write, plan and do a thou¬ 
sand other things,” she wrote her mother. 
“The students call Dr. Hitchcock, ‘Old Doc,’ 
because they love him.” 

So often did her committee of men find Miss 
Lyon to have been right in not heeding “the 
advice of wise and judicious friends” that they 
became almost afraid to oppose any decision 
she made. But she knew when to act on their 
advice. 

In her effort to educate the people in favor 
of educating women, Miss Lyon said: 

“Educated women exert a power over soci¬ 
ety which cannot be exerted by mere goodness 
without intellectual strength.” 


MARY LYON 99 

How she wished that more men could ob¬ 
serve with her many of her Ipswich students 
in their own homes! If they compared “the 
good common sense, the correct reasoning, the 
industry and perseverance, the patience, meek¬ 
ness and gentleness” of many of these women 
with untrained women similarly placed, they 
would be won at once to her views. Many 
still thought education “thrown away” on 
women. 

“Would it not be less of an evil,” Miss Lyon 
asked, “for the farmers and mechanics through 
the land, who are to spend all their lives in 
laboring to support their families, to have 
scanty stores of learning, than for their wives, 
who must train up the children, to be thus 
scantily furnished?” 

As a part of her plan, Miss Lyon settled 
upon the ideal of first securing teachers who 
would find the joy of service more alluring 
than pay. This would help to convince men 
that money had no part in their scheme. All 
students were to enter on an equal footing 
and share in the housework. Miss Grant 
could not agree to either of these at the time. 

In a letter to Amanda White, Miss Lyon 


100 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


said: “After the acquaintance I have had with 
many cultivated and interesting families whose 
daughters performed in a systematic manner 
all their own labor, I have the greatest confi¬ 
dence that a system might be formed by which 
all the domestic work of a family of one hun¬ 
dred could be performed by the young ladies 
themselves and in the most perfect order with¬ 
out any sacrifice of improvement in knowledge 
and refinement. Such girls would not stoop 
to receive a definite number of cents daily or 
weekly, yet with the utmost cheerfulness and 
dignity they would do their share for the sake 
of the school.” 

Under this plan no servants would be en¬ 
gaged. To mix scholars and servants would 
be most unwise. Miss Lyon thought the 
plan should free the students “from that 
servile dependence on common domestics to 
which young ladies as mere boarders in a large 
establishment are often subject, to their great 
inconvenience.” She felt, too, that those from 
homes of wealth and those accustomed to little 
could each benefit greatly from the mutual 
helpfulness and service. Perhaps it would 
even help to rid ordinary people of their feel- 


MARY LYON 


101 


ing against the education of women. “Yet it 
is a mere appendage, after all,” she continued 
in her letter to Amanda White, “and not an 
essential feature of the proposed institution. 
If experiment should prove the plan to be im¬ 
practicable or inexpedient (which, however, 
we do not expect), domestics could be intro¬ 
duced to perform the family labor, and the 
change would not affect the essential and more 
important features of the school.” 

Slowly, by means of circulars, advertising 
and untiring effort on the part of Mary Lyon, 
the seminary fund grew. Squire White had 
been interested and sympathetic from the 
first, and Mary Lyon had more than once 
consulted him. He was one of the most lib¬ 
eral contributors. 

But up to January, 1835, neither a name 
nor a location had been decided upon. Now 
it seemed a necessity that such important 
details should be settled. A meeting of the 
committee was set for the 8th of January. 
The weather proved to be bitterly cold. Miss 
Lyon was not present at the conference, but 
she desired to be nearby and had been asked 
to go to Worcester, Massachusetts, to consult 


102 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


with the members. That the mercury stood 
below zero mattered not to her. She rose be¬ 
fore daylight, in order to make the trip by 
stage from Amherst. Professor Hitchcock 
went with her. Wrapped in a buffalo robe 
she quite enjoyed the icy air. 

“A small village close by the Connecticut 
seems the ideal spot to me,” she said, “where 
the institution will rise up and grow under 
the protection of an extended population 
rather than one town. But I leave the selec¬ 
tion of the site to the committee.” 

Three towns in western Massachusetts had 
been investigated. They were South Deer¬ 
field, Sunderland and South Hadley. As 
there was no railroad running to any one of 
them, their claims were very nearly equal. 
The first trains in New England were run be¬ 
tween Providence and Boston the following 
summer. 

All day Miss Lyon awaited news of a de¬ 
cision having been reached by the committee. 
Night came on and still no word. At mid¬ 
night she was informed that the choice had 
narrowed down to Sunderland or South Had¬ 
ley. The next day South Hadley was finally 


MARY LYON 


103 


selected. But it was not until April that the 
name for the seminary was chosen. 

“Pangynaskean Seminary,” was Professor 
Hitchcock’s suggestion. It was met with 
laughter from the people, although his idea 
was to convey a “reminder that strongly 
stressed development of the whole woman.” 
Few realized the Greek significance, and the 
word was unpronounceable! Seminary met 
with no objection from anyone for the term 
was then interchangeable with college . Neither 
was the word “female” out of favor in that 
day. And so, when Mount Holyoke Female 
Seminary was at last decided upon—having 
been suggested by the nearness of that stately 
mountain to South Hadley—it was thought 
all that could be desired in a name. Female 
Seminary was a triumph in itself. 

The ridicule of “Pangynaskian”—an un¬ 
fortunate name—extended to the press in the 
form of sarcastic editorials and articles. This 
was greatly to be regretted by those who held 
the project dear. Yet these same unfriendly 
comments which sought to belittle the semi¬ 
nary bore fruit in unexpected ways. Persons 
who heretofore had shown no interest in the 


104 


FAMOUS AMERICANS 


founding of Mount Holyoke had their sym¬ 
pathies aroused. One gentleman in Boston at 
once sent five hundred dollars. Upon talk¬ 
ing with Miss Lyon he offered, not only more 
money, but his time and influence. 

Alluding to the ridicule in a letter to Miss 
Grant, Miss Lyon wrote: 

“I wish a little could be said to lead that 
part of the community who would attend to 
things and not to words only, to direct their 
attention to the object, rather than to one un¬ 
desirable, temporary word ... to spend the 
time and interest they have to spare in aiding 
the great cause with which the new institution 
is connected, rather than in opposing the mere 
suggestion of a peculiar name.” 


X 


BUILDING MOUNT HOLYOKE 

With the actual spot picked out where the 
buildings were to stand, and a name selected 
which might endure for many centuries, 
Mount Holyoke entirely absorbed Miss Lyon. 
Her many friends did much to aid her. 
Agents traveled all over Xew England ex¬ 
plaining the plan and asking for help in car¬ 
rying it out. Several clergymen gave of their 
time to the work. The Reverend Roswell 
Hawks, the very first to become interested, 
traveled for three months in an effort to raise 
money. 

“I wander about without a home,” Mary 
Lyon wrote her mother and Freelove, “sel¬ 
dom knowing one week where I shall be the 
next.” Always she carried a green velvet 
money-bag. She and this bag became very 
familiar sights throughout the countryside. 
She spoke in district school houses in her own 

105 


106 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


hill country. Men and women crowded them 
in their eagerness to hear her. 

But often her ideas for educating women 
were ridiculed. Those who were interested 
with her in the founding of Mount Holyoke 
were called radicals. “It was unnatural, un- 
philosophical, unscriptural, impractical, un¬ 
feminine and anti-Christian; in fact all the 
epithets in the dictionary that begin with un 
and in and anti were hurled against and 
heaped upon it. Had not Paul said, T suffer 
not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority 
over the man, but to be in silence; and if they 
will learn anything let them ask their hus¬ 
bands at home’? It would be the entering 
wedge to woman’s preaching, practicing, lec¬ 
turing, voting, buying and selling—doing 
everything that men do and perhaps doing it 
better than men do and so overstocking the 
trades and professions! . . .” 

Even her best friends criticized Mary Lyon 
for traveling about making addresses and 
soliciting subscriptions. It was not becoming 
her sex, they said. It was not good taste. 
She should leave this to men. 

“What do I that is wrong?” she insisted. 


MARY LYON 


107 

“I ride in the stage coach or cars without an 
escort. Other ladies do the same. I visit a 
family where I have been previously invited, 
and the minister’s wife or some leading woman 
calls the ladies together to see me, and I lay 
our object before them. Is that wrong? I 
go with Mr. Hawks and call on a gentleman 
of known liberality at his own house and con¬ 
verse with him about our enterprise. What 
harm is there in that? If there is no harm in 
doing these things once, what harm is there 
in doing them twice, thrice, or even a dozen 
times? My heart is sick, my soul is pained 
with this empty gentility, this genteel noth¬ 
ingness. I am doing a great work. I cannot 
come down.” 

“Mary will not give up,” her mother told a 
neighbor in Ashfield. “She just walks the 
door and says over and over again, when all 
is so dark, ‘Commit thy way unto the Lord, 
trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to 
pass.’ Women must be educated—they must 
be!” 

Mary Lyon was suffering for the cause she 
held dear, but not worrying because of the 
unkind things many said and did. She did 


108 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


not like to be thought queer or masculine. 
She did not like notoriety for herself. What 
did that matter? She was not building for 
self. There were plenty who upheld her and 
who would give to the cause of women. She 
appealed to those with common sense. New 
Englanders would yet realize that Mount 
Holyoke might be a practical undertaking. 
She was not surprised when she heard it said 
that she was trying to establish a manual- 
labor school for young ladies. “Protestant 
nunnery” and “servile labor” were terms used 
in criticizing Mount Holyoke. An article in 
a church magazine roused Professor Hitch¬ 
cock to write an answer to the editor who be¬ 
lieved in “leaving a young lady under the care 
of her natural guardians with all the influ¬ 
ences of home clustering around her.” He 
considered women teachers “masculine.” 

“I have brought you my article. Have it 
published or not, just as you choose,” Dr. 
Hitchcock told Miss Lyon. 

“Then I choose not to notice such attacks,” 
she replied smilingly. 

Never did she answer any man or woman 
who tried to force her into an argument. She 


MARY LYON 


109 


was too big to notice their slurs and too pa¬ 
tient with them to become angry. 

Once Squire White took Miss Lyon in his 
carriage to call on a family of wealth whom 
she thought might give liberally for the build¬ 
ing of the seminary. 

“Do not expect much, my dear Miss Lyon. 
We know the people and I fear you will not 
be successful,” gentle Mrs. White told her, 
laying her hand on Mary Lyon’s shoulder. 

“Oh, I am told they are very rich and I am 
sure they will help liberally,” the younger 
woman replied, her face beaming. 

When they returned from the call Mary 
Lyon went straight to her dear counselor. 
With a sad smile and a shake of her head she 
said: “Yes, it is all true, just as I was told. 
They live in a costly house, it is full of costly 
things, they wear costly clothes—but,” in a 
whisper, “oh, they are little bits of folks!” 

But there were also the two sisters, spinsters 
both of them, who lived oh, so simply on a 
very, very slender income. 

“Don’t you think we can do with a little 
less, Sister, and pledge Miss Lyon something 
toward her noble work?” one asked the other. 


110 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

“I am very sure we can!” was the emphatic 
reply. 

Each pledged the same sum. But reverses 
came before the money fell due. They did not 
have it, so they set to work and earned it. 
They could not bear to have no part in the 
building of Mount Holyoke. 

It had been agreed upon by the trustees 
that work would begin on the building when 
twenty-five thousand dollars had been pledged 
to Mount Holyoke. But in 1836 the times 
grew harder and harder. Miss Lyon had paid 
all of her own expenses and had given liber¬ 
ally to the fund. She was most anxious to see 
a start made. When the trustees who had 
chosen the location disagreed and began to talk 
of looking about for another site on which to 
erect the seminary she wrote Miss Grant: “An¬ 
other dark cloud seems to be gathering over 
our prospects, perhaps one of the darkest that 
has ever hung over our enterprise, and yet I 
can scarcely tell why it should be so.” 

But the dark cloud passed over. The first 
land at South Hadley was kept and at last 
ground was broken. Miss Lyon was on hand 
to watch the building. When the cellar was 


MARY LYON 


111 


nearly dug, quicksand was discovered. “The 
building must be placed sixty feet farther back 
from the road,” an expert decided. “I wish it 
could go much farther back, but this is some¬ 
thing beyond my control,” Miss Lyon wrote 
her mother. 

All went well for some time. Then someone 
insisted that poor bricks were being used. An 
expert was called to pass on these. He could 
find no fault with their quality. Up went 
walls—walls which were to shelter young 
women in search of learning. Then, one morn¬ 
ing, shortly before the masons were to begin 
work, the walls collapsed! 

“Oh, how thankful I am that the workmen 
escaped!” was Miss Lyon’s smiling exclama¬ 
tion when she met the worried superintendent 
of the building. 

On the third of October, a glorious day— 
when the mountain namesake of the seminary 
was decked in gorgeous colors, as if to cele¬ 
brate a great event for which it had been wait¬ 
ing for centuries—the cornerstone of Mount 
Holyoke Female Seminary was laid. To 
South Hadley came the men and women of 
vision who could see into the future and who 


112 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


rejoiced that such things should come to be. 
They glowed at the thought of their small part 
in this historic assembling. Miss Lyon’s eyes 
were bright as she pictured the girls who were 
to come and go—whose lives would be en¬ 
riched and ennobled because of this triumph. 

Writing Miss Grant that night, she still 
thrilled with the w r onder of it all: “The stones 
and bricks and mortar speak a language,” she 
said, “which vibrates through my very soul. 
How much thought and how much feeling have 
I had on this general subject in years that are 
past! And I have indeed lived to see the time 
when a body of gentlemen have ventured to 
lay the cornerstone of an edifice which will cost 
about fifteen thousand dollars—and for an in¬ 
stitution for females. Surely the Lord hath 
remembered our low estate. This will be an 
era of female education. The work will not 
stop with this institution. This enterprise may 
have to struggle through embarrassments for 
years, but its influence will be felt. It is a 
concession on the part of gentlemen on our 
behalf which can be used again and again.” 

Yet while Mount Holyoke was gaining new 
“converts” all the time, the hard times made 


MARY LYON 


113 


it very difficult even to collect money which 
had been promised in good faith. Miss Lyon 
had to renew her tireless efforts after the build¬ 
ing was well under way. Often it seemed an 
almost impossible task. She made herself re¬ 
sponsible for all the furnishings of the semi¬ 
nary. Now again she went to the women. 

“My idea is to ask the ladies of each town 
in New England to furnish a room for one 
student. No matter how little individuals can 
give, they will then be helping to provide the 
needed comforts/’ Miss Lyon explained. 

She chose one woman in each locality to 
interest the others in doing this “bit” for 
Mount Holyoke. Always she made a wise se¬ 
lection of an energetic, capable “captain.” 
Some towns could not raise the needed fifty 
or sixty dollars while the times were so try¬ 
ing. But often one person, able to do so, 
would provide the whole amount. One man 
asked that he be permitted to furnish a room 
in memory of his daughter. A woman volun¬ 
teered to give the dishes for the seminary. It 
meant much to Miss Lyon and her assistants 
that so many were interested in doing what 
they could for the pioneer venture. Yet al- 


114 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


ways they were short of what was absolutely 
needed! Twice the opening of Mount Hol¬ 
yoke had to be delayed. 

If the other years of her life had been busy, 
1837 was quite the busiest of them all for Mary 
Lyon. She was needed constantly at South 
Hadley to superintend the planning of the 
inside of the building. She ate and slept at 
the home of the Reverend Joseph Condit. She 
spent her days with the workmen. Retween 
times she wrote letters. 

“I have so much letter-writing to do that I 
seem not to have much time for anything else,” 
she said, “and yet I have five times as much as 
I can do which I wish to do.” 

“My head is full of closets, doors, shelves, 
cupboards, sinks, tables, etc.,” she wrote 
Aaron. “You will think this new work for me 
and indeed it is.” But Aaron Lyon was used 
to his sister’s mastery of new work and he 
could easily believe her capable of such details 
as the arranging of a convenient school build¬ 
ing. 

It was finally arranged that November the 
eighth would mark the opening of Mount 
Holyoke. It was quite possible that the build- 


MARY LYON 


115 


ing would not be completed, that all the fur¬ 
nishings could not be secured—but the cause 
of women’s education need not suffer because 
little details went wrong. 

The five-story brick building was planned 
to house eighty students. The terms, includ¬ 
ing room, board and tuition, were sixty-four 
dollars for a session of forty weeks. Miss 
Lyon was realizing her dream of dreams—that 
girls from the “common walks of life” need 
not be shut out from the benefits to be had 
at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. 

When the announcement had gone out that 
young women would be received at South Had¬ 
ley on the second Wednesday in November, 
great excitement reigned in many homes. 
Girls who had been thirsting for knowledge 
and eagerly awaiting this undreamed-of 
chance ever since Mount Holyoke was 
planned, could not wait for the time to come. 
For weeks many had been packed up and 
ready to make the journey to the banks of the 
Connecticut River, as soon as word should 
come that the opening day had arrived. 

But when the middle of September came 
and there still remained so many necessary 


116 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

things to be done, Mary Lyon wrote her good 
friend Amanda White: 

“When I look through to November eighth 
it seems like looking down a precipice of many 
hundred feet, which I must descend. I can 
only avoid looking to the bottom, and fix my 
eye on the nearest stone till I have safely 
reached it.” 

Mrs. Porter, wife of Deacon Porter who 
had taken charge of the building of Mount 
Holyoke at Miss Lyon’s request, was one of 
the good friends of the seminary. Miss Lyon 
could always count on her help. The villagers 
in South Hadley began to offer their services 
also. Men set up beds and carried the furni¬ 
ture up the stairs under Miss Lyon’s direction. 
The women helped in innumerable ways. 

“How good you all are!” Miss Lyon ex¬ 
claimed over and over again as the day of 
days drew very near. 

But more and more hindrances occurred. 
Even the bedding had not arrived when the 
sun rose on the eighth day of November, 1837. 
A hurry call was sent out to the countryside 
for the loan of enough covers to make the new 
arrivals comfortable. Some students were 


MARY LYON 117 

reached in time to bring their own quilts with 
them to Mount Holyoke. 

“What a pity that all could not have been 
in readiness,” lamented one of the trustees’ 
wives, as she hurried about the great kitchen 
preparing vegetables and slicing great piles of 
bread for the first meal under the new roof. 

“Yes, it is,” replied another helper, “but 
Miss Lyon is as calm and composed as if the 
parlor was in apple pie order, instead of filled 
with work benches and paint pots.” 

“Deacon Porter is in his shirt sleeves ham¬ 
mering on the steps,” laughed his wife, “and 
Deacon Safford is also coatless and down on 
his knees struggling with the hall matting.” 

There came the sound of laughter from 
above stairs. Groups of teachers and neigh¬ 
bors were making beds with the borrowed linen 
and counterpanes. Others were working on 
quilts. “Mother Lyon” was here, there and 
everywhere. Her very presence brought a 
homelike feeling. She heard a carriage rum¬ 
bling up the shady street. When it came in 
sight she was at the door with arms out¬ 
stretched waiting to welcome the first of her 
family. 


118 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

All day long they came—by stage and by 
carryall. Eighty, eighty-two, eighty-five, 
ninety—still the last had not arrived! Before 
sundown one hundred and twenty eager, hun¬ 
gry girls had descended upon Mount Hol¬ 
yoke Female Seminary. All must be made 
comfortable. They were strange and must be 
made to feel at home. 

At four o’clock in the afternoon of that 
opening day a bell pealed forth. It resounded 
through the halls of Mount Holyoke. Doors 
opened and timid girls hurried down the stairs. 
Others, still intent upon examination ques¬ 
tions, stopped their task and followed the 
leaders to the assembly hall. Examinations 
had been going forward all day. As soon as 
each arrival had removed her hat and had 
smoothed her hair, she had been taken in charge 
by a teacher. Singly and in little groups they 
had been discovering how strangely little they 
knew. Some had occupied the stairs—using 
* the ones above them for desks. Others found 
packing boxes quite useful for the same pur¬ 
pose. Deacon Safford’s hammering, as he 
completed the laying of his matting, came up 
to them from the hall below. 



THE OLD MARY LYON BUILDING 
First building erected for the pioneer College for Women in America 















MARY LYON 


119 


“We are in glorious confusion now, but we 
hope for better order soon,” had been his good- 
natured greeting to newcomers. His task 
was completed before the gong rang out. 

When all were assembled, a prayer was of¬ 
fered and Mount Holyoke was in session. 


XI 


LIFE AT MOUNT HOLYOKE 

The “inner workings” of Mount Holyoke 
were very soon running quite smoothly under 
the able direction of Mother Lyon. There 
were few girls in her very large family who 
had not done some form of housework at 
home. Each now had her regularly allotted 
tasks. But never would that wise and thought¬ 
ful head permit any to do what might prove 
beyond her strength. Her health must come 
first, always. 

“My dear little girl,” Miss Lyon said to a 
frail student who was bending over an iron¬ 
ing board shortly after opening day, “did I 
ever assign you such a task?” 

“No, Miss Lyon,” was the blushing admit¬ 
tance, “but Hilda had something else she 
wanted to do very much and I offered to take 
her place.” 

“Just what I thought! Run away and rest, 
dear, and don’t allow a great strong young 

120 


MARY LYON 121 

lady to impose upon your soft heart again,” 
and Miss Lyon took the iron from the girl’s 
hand. 

With her usual sense of fairness Miss Lyon 
planned the work so that those having the 
heavier tasks need give less of their time to 
them. At regular intervals rooms and duties 
were exchanged. 

The fact that all had not been in readiness 
when they arrived at the seminary soon proved 
to be a happy chance to those hundred and 
twenty girls. They were consulted and had 
their share in the arranging of the furnishings 
of their Alma Mater. Homesickness could not 
last long where there was so much to occupy 
every moment. When everything was in order 
Mount Holyoke presented an appearance at 
once dignified and in perfect taste. It was 
both home and seminary. Already there was 
beginning to grow a sense of loyalty which 
few would ever outgrow. 

“Our family,” Miss Lyon would say with 
justifiable pride. 

She believed in her girls, she trusted them 
and she loved them. Few ever disappointed 
her. 


122 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


It did not prove difficult to enter Mount 
Holyoke. Miss Lyon realized fully that if en¬ 
trance requirements were made hard, few girls 
would have had enough preparation to meet 
them. A thorough course in the common 
schools was expected. The examinations cov¬ 
ered English grammar, United States history, 
modern geography, arithmetic, and Watts on 
the mind. Sometime before the opening Miss 
Lyon had advised all prospective students to 
devote their time to further study. She gave 
them an outline and urged that each set about 
attaining habits of accuracy, clearness and 
rapidity of thought. 

The age required for entrance to Mount 
Holyoke was sixteen. Miss Lyon did not be¬ 
lieve in putting little girls to hard study. Un¬ 
der sixteen their memory was at its best. 
Then was the time to cultivate it. Overstudy 
when young caused nervousness, ruined con¬ 
stitutions, was responsible for “sadness with¬ 
out reason,” and often proved fatal to high 
intellectual attainment, she believed. 

“The most discouraging field which any 
teacher was ever called to cultivate is the mind 
of a young lady who has been studying all 


MARY LYON 


123 


her days, and has gone over most of the natural 
and moral sciences without any valuable im¬ 
provement, until she is tired of school, tired 
of books and tired almost of life,” Miss Lyon 
said. This she believed to be the result of too 
early “forcing.” 

“Manners, the cultivation of the voice, in¬ 
cluding singing, pronunciation and all the 
characteristics of good reading; gaining skill 
in such mechanical operations as sewing, draw¬ 
ing and writing,” said Miss Lyon, “are often 
neglected till too late a period.” To these she 
would add spelling, composition, memory work 
and the reading of good books, as well as the 
pronunciation of foreign languages and in¬ 
strumental music, as being best pursued when 
young. 

Miss Lyon believed that the life at Mount 
Holyoke, aside from all study would be of 
much help to her girls. “A young lady needs 
to feel herself a member of a large community, 
she told them, “where the interests of others 
are to be sought equally with her own. She 
needs to learn by practice as well as by prin¬ 
ciple that private interests are to be sacrificed 
for the public good; and she needs to know 


124 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

from experience that those who make such a 
sacrifice will receive an ample reward in the 
improvement of the community among whom 
they are to dwell.” 

“We must always consider the good of the 
whole,” became a proverb at Mount Holyoke. 

At first a three-year course—junior, mid¬ 
dle, and senior—was provided at the seminary. 
There was no preparatory department. Walk¬ 
ing and calisthenics were made a rule. This 
was most unusual, but Miss Lyon knew the 
value of fresh air and proper exercise. She 
also would have her girls get plenty of sleep. 
In a talk to them she said: 

“Early rising, young ladies, is not rising at 
any particular hour, for what is early for one 
may be late for another. Early rising for any 
individual is rising at the earliest time proper 
for her under the existing circumstances. The 
hour of rising should not be decided on in the 
delicious dreaminess of half-waking, and more 
than half-dozing, state of one’s morning slum¬ 
bers; but the decision should be made when 
you are up and awake with all your powers in 
vigorous exercise. In deciding, you must take 
in view your age. Young persons who have 


MARY LYON 


125 


not fully attained their growth, need more 
sleep than those of mature years. You must 
consider the state of your health. Feeble per¬ 
sons, with constitutions made to run only half 
the threescore years and ten, need more sleep 
than the strong and healthy. Some allow¬ 
ance, too, must be made for the temperaments 
of different individuals. Some require more 
sleep than others, but those who need a large 
amount should take their additional sleep in 
the early part of the night. Who was it that 
said, ‘One hour’s sleep before midnight is worth 
two after?’ Yes, Dr. Dwight, a man of large 
experience and careful observation. 

“Now, young ladies, you are here at great 
expense. Your board and tuition cost a great 
deal, and your time ought to be worth more 
than both; but in order to get an equivalent 
for the money and the time you are spending, 
you must be systematic. That is impossible 
unless you have a regular hour for rising. If 
that hour is five, and you are on your feet be¬ 
fore the clock is done striking, then you are 
punctual. But if you lie five minutes, or even 
one, after the hour passes, you are tardy and 
you must lose a little respect for yourself in 


126 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

consequence. Persons who run around all day 
after the half-hour they lost in the morning 
never accomplish much. You may know them 
by a rip in the glove, a string pinned to the 
bonnet, a shawl left on the balustrade—which 
they had no time to hang up, they were in 
such a hurry to catch that lost thirty minutes. 
You will see them opening their books and 
trying to study at the time of the general ex¬ 
ercises in school. But it is a fruitless race— 
they never will overtake their lost half hour. 
Good men, from Abraham to Washington, 
have been early risers. . . . 

“Now, young ladies, I want every one of 
you to fix an hour for rising for a week to 
come. Be sure not to fix too early an hour, 
for it would not injure your character nearly 
so much to make a mistake and decide to rise 
at six, when you might rise at half-past five 
without any injury to your health, as to fail 
to meet your own appointment.” 

Miss Lyon set a good example by retiring 
early and rising with the lark. Her own 
abounding health was proof that she was fully 
equal to the tasks she set herself. 

Always the head of Mount Holyoke looked 


MARY LYON 


127 


forward to the time when the courses of study 
for young women should be the same as those 
prescribed in the colleges for men. She often 
said that she regretted very much that Latin 
and Greek could not at once be made a part 
of the required course. Public opinion was 
too much against it at this time. 

“Miss Lyon is the most wonderful person 
I ever knew,” said one of her girls to another 
as they were making their way to the seminary 
hall for the opening exercises one morning. 
“Time and again I have made up my mind to 
do one thing and just a word or a look from 
her and I do the very opposite! And the 
queer part of it is I want to do it!” 

“I know,” agreed her companion, “it is the 
same with me. She looks at one so kindly and 
all the while you feel that she is reading your 
very soul. She is so devout, and so just, and 
so honorable herself that her very presence 
makes you want to be like her.” 

It was at the exercises that morning that 
Miss Lyon delivered a talk which was long 
remembered by her students. In telling of it 
one of them said: “She started off with a short 
talk on comparative anatomy. ‘The scientist 


128 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

in exhuming an animal may find but one bone 
or a tooth/ she said, ‘but from that alone he 
forms the entire animal. He can tell us 
whether it ate grass or flesh, whether it was 
gentle or ferocious. So little things indicate 
character. Knowing one trait of a person, 
whether he does or fails to do some little thing, 
the whole individual is revealed. You need 
l$;now no more. If Domitian would amuse him¬ 
self by catching flies and piercing them through 
with a bodkin, it was to be expected that he 
would kill Christians.’ The great principle 
was developed in a masterly way. It was a 
magnificent lecture by itself; but the initiated 
knew there was ‘something coming.’ It came 
at length! The descent was easy for Miss 
Lyon, but it was by no means ridiculous—in 
fact it was solemn. Much to Miss Lyon’s sat¬ 
isfaction the ironing room had been nicely re¬ 
fitted. The coverings were white and dainty. 
But upon its inaugural day these were badly 
discolored. Some showed the imprint of the 
iron, she told us, while others had been burned 
through. She did not care for that. The 
spoiling of the goods she could take joyfully. 
But it did pain her that any of her dear family 


MARY LYON 129 

should show a carelessness akin to recklessness. 
It was the moral tarnish she feared. It might 
he a straw, hut it showed which way the wind 
blew.” 

The routine at Mount Holyoke was along 
the same lines as had been laid out at Ipswich. 
A number of the seniors at Mount Holyoke 
were old Ipswich students. Miss Grant had 
resigned her work at Derry-Ipswich some 
time before the opening of Mount Holyoke. 
Her health had broken to such an extent that 
she could no longer keep up the seminary. 
She was now Mrs. Banister. There had been 
no one to “carry on” Ipswich Seminary as she 
and her former assistant had done. But the 
teaching ranks of Mount Holyoke, as well as 
the student body, were enriched because of the 
training given there. The two great friends 
never lost touch of each other, and Miss 
Lyon was never happier than when she re¬ 
ceived a visit from her former head. Nor was 
the first intimate friendship of Miss Lyon’s 
life ever allowed to die out. Amanda White 
remained ever her dearest friend. 

That she could devote very little of her time 
to letters to her relatives and friends when 


130 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

occupied with so many pressing duties, was 
always a source of keen regret to one so so¬ 
ciably inclined as Miss Lyon. She did write— 
not only to her mother and sisters and these 
most intimate outsiders—but to each one of 
her nephews and nieces. Rut a letter to 
Amanda shows how she felt regarding her cor¬ 
respondence : 

“How I should love, if I ever did such a 
thing, to write you a long letter! When I 
have a business letter to write and know that 
I need not add a single line to the business in 
hand, I can catch a few moments and sit right 
down and write it. But when I think of writ¬ 
ing a letter of friendship, I dislike to give the 
odds and ends of a tired-out mind. ...” 

To her nieces and nephews Miss Lyon 
seemed the most wonderful aunt in the world. 
She was vitally interested in their education. 
She helped them with the problems which they 
met. Out of her slender income of two hun¬ 
dred dollars a year—all she would accept as 
head of Mount Holyoke—she managed some¬ 
how to aid them with loans in order that they 
might have the benefits of a good education. 
In the end, all of her nieces were graduated 


MARY LYON 


131 


from Mount Holyoke and the nephews from 
Yale and Williams. 

As time went on at South Hadley such a 
tender, intimate bond of affection grew up 
between Mother Lyon and her students, that 
there was not one who did not look upon Mount 
Holyoke as a second home. “Sometimes I ac¬ 
cuse my sister of having left at least two-thirds 
of her heart at Mount Holyoke Seminary,” 
wrote the brother of one of her girls to Miss 
Lyon. 

When there were visitors at Mount Hol¬ 
yoke Miss Lyon was always the gracious hos¬ 
tess. It mattered not how burdened she was 
with the many responsibilities she had assumed, 
she would be the same calm, smiling, interested 
woman. Parents found her not only digni¬ 
fied but warm-hearted and sympathetic. Her 
very presence was an inspiration. Little sis¬ 
ters and brothers were surprised and delighted 
at the attention she paid them. She was de¬ 
voted to them and knew just what would please 
them most. “A wonderful woman!” almost 
everyone who met the head of Mount Hol¬ 
yoke would exclaim. 

When Aaron’s daughter Lucy arrived as a 


132 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

student, Mother Lyon felt as if she indeed 
had her own with her. 

“I shall try hard to be a credit to you, Aunt 
Mary,” the girl said earnestly. 

“I am not worrying about that, my dear 
niece,” Miss Lyon replied, “Aaron’s children 
are all going to be credits to the family.” And 
so it was that a few years later when Lucy 
Lyon Lord and her young husband set sail 
for China as missionaries, Mary Lyon thrilled 
with pride in these young people—even though 
the parting was very hard to endure. Their 
letters were events in her life. 

Miss Lyon described those first months at 
Mount Holyoke in a letter to the Reverend 
Theron Baldwin, who was just about to open 
Monticello Seminary in Illinois. It was dated 
May, 1838: 

“For many weeks I was engaged many hours 
every day about the domestic department. 
Sometimes I was contriving about the fitting 
of furniture and cooking utensils. Again, I 
was planning for the division of labor and for 
time and place so that everything could be done 
in season and in order, without any loss to the 


MARY LYON 133 

young ladies and with no interference with 
studies or recreations. 

“I had several points to gain, and some¬ 
times my whole energy was devoted to one and 
sometimes to another. One point was that a 
high standard should be established for the 
manner of having the work done; another, 
that every department of the domestic work 
should be popular with the young ladies. For 
three or four months I never left the family 
for a single half-day. I then said to the young 
ladies that I considered the family as organ¬ 
ized, and that I wished to go to Boston to be 
absent two or three weeks, that I might, be¬ 
sides finding a little rest, know whether the 
wheels which I have been occupied so long in 
arranging could move without my aid. On 
my return everything was in perfect order, and 
there has not been a time since when I could 
not be absent three months without any loss 
to the domestic department. I need not go 
into the kitchen once a month unless I prefer, 
but I do love daily to pass around from room 
to room in the basement story and see how 
the wheels move forward. . . . 

“We have none under sixteen and nearly 


134 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

all are from firm, well-bred families in New 
England. They have been generally well edu¬ 
cated so far, and well trained in domestic pur¬ 
suits. We have no domestics. . . . We have a 
hired man who boards himself. He takes care 
of our garden, saws wood, and performs va¬ 
rious little offices for our comfort. The fam¬ 
ily is so large that by a proper division of time 
all can be done and each occupied but a short 
time. No young lady feels she is performing 
a duty from which she could be relieved by the 
payment of higher bills. . . . 

“The daily work brings an hour of regular 
exercise, coming every day and at the same 
hour of the day. . . . The oldest and more 
studious scholars are the ones who have always 
troubled me by neglecting exercise. But they 
walk more here of their own accord, without 
influence, than any young ladies of the same 
character I have ever seen. . . . Our young la¬ 
dies study with great intensity, but they seem 
just as vigorous the last of the term as ever. 
The vivacity and apparent vigor of our young 
ladies near the close of our winter term of 
twenty weeks, and at the examination, was no¬ 
ticed as unusual by gentlemen of discrimina- 


MARY LYON 


135 


tion. Whatever they do they seem to do with 
all their might, whether it be study or walking 
or domestic work or gathering plants or sing¬ 
ing.” 

“That domestic hall is a daily object lesson 
in system and order, a beautiful example of 
cooperative housekeeping,” wrote one of the 
girls to her parents. It was fun to cook and 
set the table—yes, even to wash dishes and to 
scour pots, amid such happy surroundings. 
Merry groups of girls might be seen at work 
all over the five stories of the big brick build¬ 
ing with brooms, dusters and other “tools.” 
Team work and leadership were developed in 
this way as well as in games. 

“I never knew the real value of time until 
I came here,” a student remarked. “Miss 
Lyon is a shining example herself of what 
may be done in a day when one plans her 
tasks.” 

But Miss Lyon had not deliberately planned 
so many tasks for herself. First, she assumed 
those of the woman she had engaged as do¬ 
mestic superintendent when the latter’s health 
failed soon after she arrived. Miss Lyon, out 
of the kindness of her heart, insisted upon pay- 


136 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


ing the poor disappointed person almost the 
amount she would have received for the year 
for the work which she then assumed herself. 
Whenever a teacher left to be married or to go 
into the mission field, it was the President of 
Mount Holyoke who took over her work until 
the vacancy was filled, rather than impose 
upon anyone else. 

In the spring of the first year, Miss Lyon’s 
assistant, Miss Caldwell, broke down. For 
weeks her duties were also taken over by Miss 
Lyon. 

“I confess that I would forget many things 
if it were not for the fact that I keep a note 
book,” she said. “I find I must make a mem¬ 
orandum of each thing I plan to do.” 

For the first time in her life Miss Lyon 
taught Whately’s Logic. She entered into it 
with as much eagerness and relish as she had 
plunged into Virgil in the old days. She also 
gave systematic religious instruction, criticized 
compositions, instructed the middle class in 
chemistry and watched recitations. 

Miss Lyon had a faculty for finding just the 
right sort of persons for teachers. Not all 
were equally gifted nor could it be said that 


MARY LYON 


137 


Mount Holyoke had the best faculty in the 
country, but its teachers were strong, loyal 
women who were eager to do good work. 

Miss Lyon always believed in the best that 
was possible for the seminary. Many were 
ready to criticize because she had better furni¬ 
ture in the parlors than many of her girls had 
at home and because there were carpets on the 
floors. “I want our young ladies to see that 
which is suited to the best homes; I want them 
ready to grace the finest and to beautify the 
lowest,” she would reply to such critics. 

Once a week Miss Lyon had what she called 
“a family meeting.” At this meeting she 
would talk as a mother of a family to her chil¬ 
dren. Each girl was encouraged to bring 
questions and criticisms on slips of paper. In 
this way no one knew who it was who asked 
the questions or offered the criticisms. Be¬ 
cause one class had a membership of fifty stu¬ 
dents its members asked if it might not have 
some special privilege. Miss Lyon read the 
question aloud. Her eyes twinkled as she re¬ 
plied, “Oh, yes, young ladies, you shall have 
the privilege of being the best students and 
finest characters we have ever graduated.” 


138 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


It was at “a family meeting” that Miss 
Lyon said: “Some of you will be disappointed, 
perhaps, when you get home. You will find 
humble work to do—washing dishes, darning 
stockings for your brothers and sisters, and 
you will say, ‘was it for this that I studied 
higher mathematics and Butler’s “Analogy”?’ 
Did you ever stand by a little lake and drop 
in a pebble, and watch the circles as they wid¬ 
ened and widened and were lost in the dis¬ 
tance? So lift your mother’s burdens, help 
with the little brother or sister. You may not 
know the result, but be sure that your influence 
will widen and widen into eternity.” 

The Bible became a wonderful book as Miss 
Lyon opened it to her girls. She never dis¬ 
cussed doctrines, but she preached faith, hope 
and charity. 

It was on a cold winter’s night, when the 
wind was blowing the snow into huge drifts 
and it was impossible to keep any place but the 
dining-room warm, that Miss Lyon gathered 
her pupils there for the Bible lesson. They 
were going through the wilderness with Moses 
and the tribes. Telling of that lesson one of 
her girls said: “How we enjoyed that evening 


MARY LYON 


139 


with Miss Lyon! The tables she had repre¬ 
sent the twelve tribes when encamped, and 
the room seemed all alight with the cloud of 
fire which they were to follow. The Bible was 
made a living reality. So many passages I 
marked bring back to me the blessed lessons. 
She never talked in a way to criticize 
others. ... I never heard her speak of de¬ 
nominations, but she made us feel that we 
were to work for the Master wherever our lot 
was cast.” 

One morning there was great excitement 
among the students at Mount Holyoke. 
Posters were out announcing the coming of 
the circus to South Hadley. 

“Do you suppose Mother Lyon will allow 
us to go?” the girls asked one another. It 
was decidedly doubtful. They remembered 
how firm she had been when they wished to 
attend a vocal concert which was to be given 
in the meeting house. Many had been indig¬ 
nant at the time. The Hutchinsons who were 
giving the concert were friends of the family 

of one of the girls, too. Jane W- had 

complimentary tickets. Miss Lyon had given 
her reason for refusing her permission. Time 



140 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


could not be spared that evening from studies 
and it was unfair to permit a few to go, when 
the favor could not be granted to all. But 
after all everything had turned out for the best 
on that occasion. The Hutchinsons had not 
only failed to take offense—but they had given 
the entire seminary a private morning concert 
which no one had enjoyed more than Miss 
Lyon herself. Yet no one dared ask permis¬ 
sion to go to the circus. 

The day of the circus arrived. Miss Lyon 
had an announcement to make. Every young 
lady would be permitted to attend the after¬ 
noon performance. There was to be only one 
restriction. When any one of the teachers was 
seen moving toward the exit all were to leave 
at once. The cost of admission was to be half 
the regular price. Miss Lyon had written the 
management and made this request, as all of 
the girls could not otherwise have afforded to 
go. There was a chorus of happy voices thank¬ 
ing Mother Lyon and then lessons and tasks 
were resumed. 

At two o’clock that afternoon a decorous 
group of girls, well chaperoned by teachers, 
took their seats in the big tent. All went well 


MARY LYON 


141 


until the elephants were marched around the 
track. One had a howdah on its back. Its 
attendant halted it close to the group of young 
ladies from Mount Holyoke. 

“Will any young lady volunteer to mount 
and ride the elephant?” called the manager in 
a loud voice. Two or three in the audience 
rose timidly and then blushingly resumed their 
seats. The manager repeated his invitation. 
Without hesitation a senior rose and walked 
straight to the ring, up the ladder and seated 
herself on the huge beast with as much assur¬ 
ance and ease as if she were indeed an Eastern 
princess off for her accustomed ride. There 
was consternation among the students. 

“What a bold, bad act for a missionary’s 
daughter!” exclaimed one. 

“How dare a senior set us such an exam¬ 
ple!” cried another. 

Some said she would surely be suspended. 
Others thought Miss Lyon might let her off 
with a severe reprimand if she expressed her 
penitence. Around the ring strode the great 
beast with its fair rider apparently thoroughly 
enjoying the experience. Once back to the 
starting point, the senior quietly dismounted 


142 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

and, unabashed, resumed her seat. Wonder 
of wonders! The teachers did not at once rise 
and lead the way out. The performance con¬ 
tinued. When it was over all filed out with the 
rest of the spectators. At supper-time every 
student was in her seat. The incident of the 
elephant ride was not mentioned! Miss Lyon, 
wise as Solomon, made no allusion to it. 

“I am sorry you are so homesick,” Miss 
Lyon comforted, some time later upon finding 
one of her girls in tears. “Don’t you remem¬ 
ber how very anxious you were to come to 
Mount Holyoke, and that I took you in when 
there was not really room for one more?” 

“I know it, Miss Lyon,” she replied, “and I 
never shall forgive you for doing it.” 

But it was only a short time before this same 
girl exclaimed, “Oh, how could I have been 
so impertinent! I never shall forget how pa¬ 
tient she was with me! To make it all the 
worse, too, as I was passing out of the room I 
overheard my section teacher say to her, ‘You 
are spoiling that girl, you indulge her so much. 
If I or any of the other teachers refuse her 
anything, she goes to you and she gets it.’ 

“ ‘Yes,’ returned dear Miss Lyon, ‘but she 


MARY LYON 


143 


is young and far from her mother, and I am 
sorry for her. I do not believe it will hurt 
her/ 

“Sorry that I came to Mount Holyoke? I 
shall be glad all of my life just to have known 
her/’ 

Miss Lyon often regretted the fact that 
she did not have much more time in which to be 
friendly and intimate with her many “daugh¬ 
ters.” Home life, as well as the larger inter¬ 
ests of community and state, was very dear to 
her. Her circle of acquaintance was legion 
and the personal influence she exerted extended 
far from the little river town of South Hadley. 

Knowing of Miss Lyon’s influence over 
girls, it was the dying request of one mother 
that her six daughters should become students 
at Mount Holyoke. For twenty-five years 
one or more of them was to be there either as 
student or teacher. The father once exclaimed, 
“We certainly know Mary Lyon and Mount 
Holyoke well!” 

As a roommate one of these six sisters found 
Miss Lyon ever patient, radiant and cheerful. 
“Some have thought her severe,” she said, “but 
I have found her quite the opposite.” 


144 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


Always she sought to make the course of 
study such as should lead to a collegiate course. 
She was most anxious to include Latin. 

“I hardly hope to live to see Mount Holyoke 
a college,” she admitted, “but others will.” 


XII 


RESULTS OF PIONEERING 

Mount Holyoke’s first anniversary occurred 
in August. An entire week was given to the 
great occasion—including the days on which 
examinations were held. These took place on 
Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday half 
of the students made the journey to Amherst 
to attend commencement there. Those who 
stayed behind spent an exciting and busy day 
preparing all the good things for the next. 
Forty guests had been invited to dine with 
the faculty and students on Mount Holyoke’s 
first commencement day. Everything was 
made ready by the girls themselves. They 
would not permit extra help to be employed. 

Thursday dawned bright and clear. With 
heads uncovered, shaded by parasols, the pro¬ 
cession of students marched to the church. It 
was headed by Miss Lyon and the seniors. It 
had not been her choice to hold the exercises in 
the church. She graciously yielded up her wish 

145 


146 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

to conduct them in the assembly hall at the 
seminary, however, when it was pointed out 
to her how few outsiders could be admitted 
there. 

“I do not wish to deprive anyone of the 
privilege—especially the parents of our young 
ladies,” she said, “but neither do I care to 
make a display of the event.” 

All seats at the church not reserved for the 
student body and their guests were filled, long 
before the procession made its appearance. 
There were three “fair graduates”—the very 
first to receive such honors. No wonder Miss 
Lyon’s face was radiant. It was her hour of 
victory—an hour which would never be for¬ 
gotten. She had fought a long, hard battle. 
Now the results of her pioneering were begin¬ 
ning to show. Those who had shaken their 
heads in disapproval of such radical ideas as 
hers concerning the education of females were 
approving her very persistence. 

“Miss Lyon was not an impractical 
dreamer, after all,” said a business man. 

“I do not believe they are any less womanly 
because of their study of higher mathematics 
and logic,” commented another. 


MARY LYON 


147 


“There seems no good reason why young 
women should not be given the same opportuni¬ 
ties as young men,” agreed a third. 

New England agreed pretty generally, in 
fact, that Mount Holyoke was a credit to it 
and that they had reason to be proud of its 
founder. 

The Commencement Day orator was the 
Rev. Dr. Hawes of Hartford. Throughout 
his address Miss Lyon sat reviewing the work 
which had been done. So deeply was she 
moved that tears and smiles strove for mastery. 
Her girls felt the thrill of the occasion. It 
was Miss Lyon’s beloved pastor and friend, 
the Rev. Joseph Condit, who made the pres¬ 
entation of the three diplomas. They read: 

Mount Holyoke Female Seminary 

This certifies that Miss - has completed the 

prescribed course of study at this Seminary and by 
her proficient and correct deportment merits this 
testimonial of approbation. 

In testimony whereof the trustees affix their seal 
at South Hadley, Massachusetts, this fourth day 
of August in the year of our Lord one thousand 
eight hundred and forty-two. 

Mary Lyon, Principal , 

Joseph D. Condit, Secretary . 

By order of the Trustees. 


148 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


All three of Mount Holyokes first grad¬ 
uates later became teachers at their Alma 
Mater. 

At the close of the first year Miss Caldwell, 
the assistant principal, had married. Miss 
Lyon then assumed entire charge. Her great 
love, both for her work and her students, made 
it possible for her to exert her strength to the 
utmost without thinking of herself. Her 
whole life centered around those she loved. 
Her nature was so full of love and trust that 
she could not easily believe others capable of 
other feelings. 

It has been said of Napoleon that he took 
it for granted that everyone was selfish. Miss 
Lyon took it for granted that all with whom 
she had to do were unselfish. She included 
every human soul among her kindred. When 
urging a pupil to some self-denying act—such 
as accepting an uncongenial girl as her room¬ 
mate—she reasoned that the girl with whom 
she talked must have as tender a regard for 
the well-being of her fellows as for her own. 
She believed the less fortunate would greatly 
benefit by having intimate association with one 
of the more gifted pupils. 


MARY LYON 


149 


“If we put two of these less fortunate chil¬ 
dren together,” she would say, “they will cer¬ 
tainly injure one another. Who for one can 

do it better than you? Miss -’s mother 

died when she was a child and her early train¬ 
ing, I know, has been deficient. She needs 
someone to help her. She loves you, you know, 
and you cannot tell how much good you can 
do by rooming with her. Of course you would 
be glad to do her good, wouldn’t you? Some 
self-denial, no doubt, but then we cannot do 
much without self-denial. I made up my mind 
on that point many years ago.” 

Miss Lyon would talk in this way until the 
girl would also see her great opportunity for 
real service. The teacher’s beaming approval 
of her decision would be a reward in itself. 

Miss Lyon had lost none of that feeling of 
respect for Sunday which had been so marked 
in her as a little child. “The Sabbath,” she 
would say to her girls, “is a key to unlock the 
treasures of the week.” 

Each morning and evening at Mount Hol¬ 
yoke a half hour was set apart for private de¬ 
votions. During these periods there was a 
deep silence over the entire building. “Before 



150 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

you kneel to pray,” the girls were instructed, 
“consider what you want to ask God to grant 
you. Be careful for nothing. ... Use any 
words which come to you. . . . Bring every¬ 
thing before Him. . . . Confess your sins. 
Recount your mercies. Thank God for His 
goodness. When love flows in upon your soul 
tell your Saviour that you love Him. Pray 
for those you love at home; pray for them by 
name. . . . You will find your half hour to 
he entirely too short. How often when the 
bell rings for its close, it seems to me that it 
has just begun. You will not know how to 
leave your Father and your God. ...” 

Many girls afterwards referred to those 
quiet half hours as the real beginning of their 
great love for divine things. She truly be¬ 
lieved that family prayer, public worship, and 
private devotions were the natural details in 
observing one’s duty towards God. “Though,” 
she would often say, “one can serve Him when 
making a bed or dusting a room.” The second 
great commandment, “Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself,” was being obeyed when 
one showed consideration for others, faithful¬ 
ness in all tasks, promptness in keeping every 


MARY LYON 


151 


appointment, and put everything in its place. 

Miss Lyon taught by example but she also 
offered many a precept. Her fund of quo¬ 
tations were fitting to every occasion. On 
Sunday morning she would recall the injunc¬ 
tion of the apostle: “Not forsaking the as¬ 
sembling of yourselves together, as the man¬ 
ner of some is.” In the time of green fruit 
—Paul’s words to his jailer, “Do thyself no 
harm,” were effective in restraining the “ven¬ 
turesome.” “Eat to live, not live to eat;” 
“Keep the body a servant, give reason and 
conscience the reins,” were oft-repeated in¬ 
junctions. 

No prizes were ever offered at Mount Hol¬ 
yoke, no appointments promised the gifted and 
ambitious. The great motive presented to 
her pupils by Miss Lyon was their account¬ 
ability to God for the right use of minutes 
and hours. It was more often necessary to 
curb those who were over-eager in their studies 
than to stimulate them toward greater effort. 

“It takes longer,” she would say, “to learn 
a lesson for a lifetime than for a week, but it 
is the best economy to give it the extra atten- 


152 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


tion necessary to make it a sure and lasting 
investment.” 

It was a rule at Mount Holyoke that all 
must go to the dining-room for meals unless 
feeling really ill. In that case the roommate 
of the sick girl was to report at once. There 
was a special table for those not feeling quite 
well. Girls sitting there might be excused 
as soon as they had finished eating. All others 
were expected to remain in their places until 
the meal was over. 

If ever a student decided to have her own 
way in spite of rules she was bound to re¬ 
gret it later. “I do not feel like going down 

to dinner to-night, Abigail,” Frances H- 

announced to her roommate one evening, “and 
there is no reason why I should. My head 
aches a little and I am not hungry. You say 
that I just want some tea and toast, and I am 
sure it will be quite all right.” 

“But I can’t say you are actually ill—you’d 
better come,” the other girl urged. 

“Nonsense! I have a right to stay in my 
room if I wish, and I told you I didn’t want 
my dinner.” 

“All right,” was the meek response. 



MARY LYON 153 

Dinner was about to begin when the girl 
got downstairs. She decided it would be best 
to report the reason for her friend’s absence 
after it was over. But Miss Lyon was quick 
to observe the vacant chair. 

“Does anyone know where Miss H-is?” 

she inquired. 

“Yes, Miss Lyon, she is up in her room,” 
replied Miss H-’s roommate. 

“I am sorry that she is ill.” 

“Oh, but she isn’t really ill, she just doesn’t 
feel like eating.” 

“Nothing at all?” The principal seemed 
anxious. 

“Well, just some tea and toast,” Abigail 
replied. “I will carry it up to her, if you 
wish.” 

“That is not necessary. But you may go 
to her and tell her the tea and toast will be 
brought to her.” 

“What did I tell you!” Frances exclaimed 
when this conversation was reported to her. 
“Mother Lyon is a dear . I knew she would 
not mind.” 

The two girls were curled up in easy chairs 
reading when there came a tap at the door. 




154 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


“Come in!” they called in chorus. 

The door was pushed gently open. There 
stood Miss Lyon with a dainty tray in her 
hand. She looked very weary after her busy 
day and the climb up three flights of stairs. 

“Oh, Miss Lyon, you should never have 
done that!” Frances cried out. “One of the 
girls could have done it.” 

“No, my dear, they each have their duties. 
If there is anything extra to be done, why 
should I call upon them rather than do it my¬ 
self? I hope you are feeling better and that 
you will enjoy your tea.” 

There was no word of reproach, no impa¬ 
tience in the voice. 

“Oh, how could I have been so selfish!” 
Frances wailed after her beloved head had left 
the room. “I would do anything on earth to 
save her—and—and I have added to her bur¬ 
dens!” 

Needless to say Frances H-did not miss 

another meal because of a headache. 

It must not be thought that Miss Lyon spent 
her strength in a reckless manner. She saved 
herself whenever she did not neglect a duty by 
so doing. Now and then she liked to get away 



MARY LYON 155 

on a little visit to relatives and friends. Al¬ 
ways she was welcomed as an ideal guest. 
Usually it was necessary for her to take with 
her unanswered letters which had piled up and 
which she could not turn over to her student 
secretaries. But the change always did her 
much good. 

“I go,” she wrote Mrs. Banister, “partly 
for my own benefit and partly to sustain my 
credit for taking proper care of my unwor¬ 
thy self.” 

The home of the Porters at Monson was a 
favorite retreat. They lived simply. Miss 
Lyon loved simple pleasures, friendly faces 
and lovely scenes. 

“This is the best place I could have come 
to for a rest,” she wrote her mother while on 
one such visit. “It is so quiet, so peaceful, the 
air is so pure and fresh, you are so surrounded 
with kind faces and kind hearts. It is so good 
to rest the first thing. I shall want to do just 
so next year.” 

After that visit Mrs. Porter, in speaking of 
her “maid” wrote: “Adeline sends respects and 
joins with me in invitation to have you come 
back. She says she would rather have Miss 


156 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


Lyon come than anyone who visits here. . . . 
I wish she was as happy in having all my 
friends come as you. It would be much to my 
comfort.” 

Miss Lyon’s capacity for finding people 
worth while caused her to ignore the lines of 
circumstance and social standing. Servants 
and children adored her. A German maid in 
the home of a friend once left Miss Lyon stand¬ 
ing on the door-step beside her trunk while 
she rushed to the stairs and shouted out joy¬ 
fully to her mistress: “The Lyon—she be 
come! The Lyon—she be come!” 

In 1839 Miss Lyon had formed what was 
called the Memorandum Society. Its object 
was to keep records of all the important events 
and happenings at Mount Holyoke. After¬ 
wards the alumnae association took its place. 
When she explained to her girls the need for 
this society her eyes flashed. She had been 
talking about Greece and the makers of his¬ 
tory. 

“This institution is destined to exist thou¬ 
sands of years,” she exclaimed. “It is founded 
on a strong basis, destined to be of a higher 
order than any seminary in the country. It is 


MARY LYON 


157 


as likely that it will continue, as that Amherst 
will continue. The design of the Memoran¬ 
dum Society is to preserve a knowledge of 
facts connected with the school. It is of vast 
importance. Could we look back upon fifty 
years of its existence we should see its utility.” 

Miss Lyon was right when she said that 
Mount Holyoke’s influence would be felt down 
the years. She was right, too, in stating that 
the influence of women would ever be greater 
because Mount Holyoke was established. 

It was looked to as “the germ of all women’s 
colleges.” Matthew Vassar had noted Miss 
Lyon’s wonderful work when he gave four 
hundred thousand dollars in the holding of 
trustees for the establishment of Vassar Col¬ 
lege in 1861. It was opened in 1865. There 
were preparatory and college departments. 
Within the next ten years Smith and Welles¬ 
ley were also founded. Smith was the first 
woman’s college to start with strict college re¬ 
quirements. Its standards were the same as 
those of Harvard, Yale, Amherst, and other 
New England colleges. 

Miss Lyon had ever believed in the power 
of knowledge and that nothing in the world 


158 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

could equal the personal influence of an edu¬ 
cated, Christian woman. Her own personal 
influence was making itself felt far and wide 
before Mount Holyoke had been long in ex¬ 
istence. 


XIII 


“the wonderful woman” 

It was on Miss Lyon’s fiftieth birthday “the 
most solemn day of her life,” that she smil¬ 
ingly turned her face toward the setting sun 
and remarked: “It is evening with me 
now. ... I need rest and repose is grateful. 
I have laid aside my armor—it has become 
more natural for me to think and speak more 
of the results of duties discharged, of actions 
performed, than it once was. I have for it 
more time, and a setting sun, you know, al¬ 
ways invites to different thoughts and inspires 
far other emotions than when shining upon us 
with his morning beams, or throwing down 
upon us his meridian splendors.” 

These words did not mean that Mother 
Lyon, that “wonderful woman,” would from 
then on put aside her duties as head of Mount 
Holyoke. Far from that. But she was more 

content with things as they were. Her “fight- 
159 


160 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


ing days” were over, perhaps, but not her rich, 
full, working days. 

Looking back from the point of vantage of 
a half century, on that February day, 1847, 
Miss Lyon realized, not only the progress that 
had been made since those sweet days of child¬ 
hood on the “little rock-ribbed farm,” but that 
she had not been merely a dreamer while the 
world was moving forward. Her great work 
was reaching out more and more. Even in 
Europe Mount Holyoke was known and 
praised. Girls could go to college! They did 
go! 

Many joys and many sorrows those years 
had brought—but still it was His will that the 
bitter should ever be mixed with the sweet. 
In the death of her beloved mother she had 
been called upon to bear one of life’s greatest 
losses. This had occurred in 1840. Freelove, 
that dear sister who was the baby of them all, 
had been taken shortly afterwards. After 
that Miss Lyon had slipped away to the hills. 
“I wish,” she said simply, “to spend a little 
while with my dear aunt and enjoy her sweet 
simple hospitality. She is the nearest resem¬ 
blance left to my very dear mother, and as the 



MARY LYON HALL, MOUNT HOLYOKE 




















/ 




MARY LYON 


161 


spring opens, when I used to watch the travel¬ 
ing and plan my business to go and see my 
mother, I have a strong desire to visit my 
aunt.” 

The nephew who had so delighted to be with 
his new aunt when Miss Lyon had made her 
visit to her brother’s home years before was in 
Yale. He was like her own son now. On every 
possible occasion she had him with her. “He 
tells me all about his affairs,” she wrote her 
niece Abigail Moore Burgess in far-off India, 
“which I encourage him to do. ... I shall 
continue to help him along a little. I enjoy 
watching over him a little very much. I love 
to do it for his own sake, I love to do it for 
his mother’s sake, and I love to do it for his 
far-off sister’s sake.” 

It was because of Mother Lyon’s influence 
that so many of her family went “into all the 
world” as missionaries. She inspired them to 
live lives of self-sacrifice for the good of others. 
Her receipt for a woman missionary called for 
“piety, a sound constitution, and a merry 
heart.” “She speaks like a voice from God 
in our midst,” one girl wrote. “Her face is a 
benediction.” 


162 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

No matter how far away the members of her 
Holyoke family went, whether to the shores of 
the River Nile or into the fastnesses of Persia 
and India, Miss Lyon contrived to keep in 
touch with them. She it was who planned the 
journals which would inform them of the hap¬ 
penings at their Alma Mater. She frequently 
spoke of them and heard from them. “Your 
Holyoke home,” she invariably called Mount 
Holyoke in writing. 

The first class reunions were also due to 
Miss Lyon’s invitations. “You must keep in 
intimate contact with one another,” she told 
her family. 

For two more years after the fiftieth birth¬ 
day of its head, life went on along the same 
fines at Mount Holyoke. The long, happy 
days, filled to their capacity with study, exer¬ 
cise and devotions; the short evenings, when 
whale-oil lamps cast flickering fight in study 
hall and bedroom—were never to be forgot¬ 
ten. Open Franklin stoves were replenished 
from individual wood bins on winter nights. 
There was an atmosphere of simplicity and 
refinement which was felt by all. Perhaps it 
was to be regretted that there was very little 


MARY LYON 


163 


opportunity for relaxation—but there was no 
lack of gaiety and good spirits. In season 
there were excursions into the woods in search 
of blueberries or nuts when the young men of 
South Hadley would be commissioned to drive. 
There were occasional longer trips, too. One 
of these was when Mount Holyoke and Am¬ 
herst united for the christening of Mount 
Norwottock. On this date there was a mem¬ 
orable picnic. 

Time had not robbed Miss Lyon of her sense 
of humor nor of her ready laugh. She was 
still the same person who in her youth found 
life “so good.” She was a very animated and 
interesting conversationalist and possessed 
the power to draw others out. 

It was on the occasion of a later commence¬ 
ment—in 1846—when there were forty-two 
graduates at Mount Holyoke—that a reporter 
on the Boston Daily Mail wrote as follows: 

“The stranger who looks at this institution, 
its splendid edifice, unsurpassed by any col¬ 
lege building in the land, containing nearly 
one hundred neatly furnished rooms, with a 
large chapel, dining-hall, surrounded by ex¬ 
tended gardens—could hardly believe that it 


164 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


had all resulted from the persevering efforts of 
one Female, enlisting the benevolent energies 
of others. Yet such is the fact. It affords 
a striking illustration of the power of the mind, 
stimulated by motives of philanthropy. The 
object of its originator was to furnish the 
means of a thorough education to promising 
daughters of the poor, as well as of the rich; 
and this object has been entirely realized.” 

Another writer on the Boston Recorder 
who was a guest at an earlier commencement 
was even more flattering in his praise of Mount 
Holyoke. 

“It is a noble affair,” he wrote. “I have 
not long thought so. I imagined it the Sine 
Dulce —a sort of New England Female Ober- 
lin, with rude buildings, and untasteful ar¬ 
rangements, and a studious avoidance of all 
that makes woman lovely, so far as they can 
be separated from what makes her respect¬ 
able and in some respects, useful. It is no 
slander to say this, for hundreds have thought 
it and do still; and besides I have recanted; 
and do fully, with one slight exception, retract 
all I have spoken against the once-named 
Pangynaskean school. 


MARY LYON 


165 


“Yesterday was the time of their anniver¬ 
sary. And I am sure that no one of the 
crowds which filled the beautiful edifice and 
listened to the performances, has any remain¬ 
ing doubts that it is one of the finest schools 
in our land. The location is charming. The 
scenery varied. The building is in good taste; 
well finished; handsomely furnished; sur¬ 
rounded by neat fences and elegant 
grounds. ... So good a dinner and so well 
served I have never before seen on a common 
table, or on any similar public occasion. The 
school room was decorated with plants. The 
teachers and pupils seemed good-humored and 
happy. And though some of the lighter ac¬ 
complishments, as drawing, music and em¬ 
broidery, were either not exhibited, or evidently 
not made very prominent in the course of in¬ 
struction, yet there was no evidence that pre¬ 
cision, awkwardness, and coarseness of taste 
are promoted by the principles and habits of 
the institution, plain and domestic as they are. 

“Of President Hopkins’ address and Mr. 
Condit’s farewell address, I can only say that 
they were worthy of the occasion. I mentioned 
an exception to my approval. I hardly know 


166 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

whether to erase that line, or to explain it by 
objecting to the public conferring of degrees. 
I think, however, it is an evil, slight in itself, 
but leading to others. It endangers that 
beautiful seclusion in which female loveliness 
should live and move, and have both its being 
and its rewards. Twelve young ladies, with¬ 
out parents, rising in a crowded church to 
receive a broad diploma with its collegiate seal, 
presented to my view the least attractive spec¬ 
tacle of a most interesting day—ought I to 
point out a spot upon the sun? Perhaps so, 
if there is any hope of removing it. 

“But it is a noble school, and will certainly 
flourish. So much for my confession and re¬ 
cantation. I have not liked it, and should not 
have advised any young lady to attend it who 
could well attend a different school. Now I 
know of none which I would sooner recom¬ 
mend even to a wealthy parent, who desired 
that his daughter should be well educated, 
without show on the one hand, or pedantry 
on the other.” 

Miss Lyon, like all real pioneers, went ahead 
of the people. Seeing no harm in publicly 
bestowing degrees upon “females” she did not 


MARY LYON 


167 


wait for others to “catch up with her.” She 
did not blame those narrow-minded ones who 
had not had a real chance to expand. They 
only needed to be taught themselves. It was 
a great satisfaction to her to find that New 
England was slowly approving. Long, long 
before she had said: “It is the great business 
to get New England conscience enlightened 
and accurate.” 

She cultivated in her students the same spirit 
of dependence upon self whenever and 
wherever an obstacle was met, that had al¬ 
ways marked her as one of the most indepen¬ 
dent of women. It was told of a young lady in 
Heath, Massachusetts, that she was once rid¬ 
ing with a friend when they encountered a 
fallen tree lying across the road. 

“I have not been to Mount Holyoke two 
years to be turned back by such an obstacle,” 
she exclaimed. Together the two girls suc¬ 
ceeded in dragging the heavy tree out of their 
path. This was the spirit of Mother Lyon’s 
“daughters.” Her girls went out from her 
presence bearing the imprint of her great per¬ 
sonality. They took what they gained into 
their homes—whether in New England or the 


168 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

far-off mission fields. They made nobler 
mothers because of her noble influence. 
Among them was the mother of a president 
of the United States. 

“The whole is equal to the sum of all its 
parts,” Miss Lyon said to her girls. “If you 
permit yourself to do less than you ought to 
do in study or in matters of right, your char¬ 
acter is so far deficient, and in failing, you lose 
your own self-respect and the power to in¬ 
fluence others.” 

“Can anyone who was present forget the 
day,” a student said, “when, rising to her feet 
at table, Miss Lyon requested the silver circle 
to bring teaspoons for dessert, saying, ‘To¬ 
day our dessert is like some young ladies 
whom you may have known, very soft and 
very sweet, but lacking in consistency.’ That 
word consistency was, from that day, one of 
our jewels.” 

“In our little parlor,” said a young teacher, 
“we frequently welcomed my brother who was 

in charge of the village academy, Miss C- 

being like another older sister. One evening 
he was taken suddenly and violently ill in our 
parlor; too ill it seemed to be removed; yet 



MARY LYON 


169 


he must be. I sent a young lady to report our 
dilemma to Miss Lyon, who came at once in 
person. Greeting the sick young man in gen¬ 
uine motherly fashion, she bade him feel per¬ 
fectly at home and to be content to remain in 
the care of his sister until the physician should 
pronounce it safe for him to leave. She di¬ 
rected that a bed should be at once placed in 
our parlor and that he should be cared for as 
faithfully as he could be in his father’s house. 
Then a consultation in the hall (not above a 
whisper) comes back to me so vividly. Tak¬ 
ing my hands in hers, she told me not to be 
troubled, that this was clearly Providential 
and all right. . . . With a wonderful insight 
she had taken the diagnosis of the case at a 
glance and saw that a course of fever was on 
our hands. She gave thoughtful directions for 
the patient and nurses. ‘Your brother is one 
of our family now—take good care of him,’ 
she said.” 

For many days the patient was delirious, but 
through the faithful and loving care he received 
at Mount Holyoke he recovered his health. 

On another occasion the seminary hall was 
the scene of a pretty wedding—at which Miss 


170 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

Lyon acted as gracious hostess. Again she 
was the mother, rather than the head of Mount 
Holyoke. Her generosity provided dainty 
refreshments; she herself must give the bride 
in marriage in the presence of all the young 
ladies who were spending the vacation at 
South Hadley. 

“In the seminary hall during one of the long 
vacations were many busy workers, making 
over carpets and repairing mattresses under 
Miss Lyon’s direction, that all might be in 
readiness when her family returned. She had 
sent to North Hampton and from her own 
scanty means purchased oranges, more rare 
and more highly prized than now, that she 
might have the pleasure of making others 
happy. One beautiful afternoon when the sun 
was flooding the room with glory, she came in, 
her face all aglow with her own beautiful se¬ 
cret, and distributed the precious fruit. . . . 
Surely there were never such oranges before 
or since.” 

It was her great love for her girls that led 
Miss Lyon to submit finally to their wishes in 
the arrangement of her hair. For long she 
had worn those beautiful, naturally wavy locks 


MARY LYON 


171 


drawn back and covered by a queer turban. 
She had resorted to this head covering after 
a fever suffered while at Ipswich, and had con¬ 
tinued to wear it for years afterwards from 
force of habit. All women past their youth 
wore some head covering when indoors in those 
days. But turbans were not in vogue. Her 
girls clubbed together and presented her with 
a more fashionable cap, which Mrs. Safford 
had been asked to buy for them in Boston. 

“We want you to be in fashion,” they ex¬ 
plained. “The cap will look so pretty and 
show your chestnut hair.” 

Miss Lyon smilingly accepted the gift. “I 
thought I should always arrange my hair this 
way,” she said, “and always wear a turban, 
but I will do almost anything to please my 
daughters.” 

While much more careful of her dress than 
in the days of her youth, she still paid little at¬ 
tention to clothes. She always wished to look 
well and to be clothed in good taste, but there 
were far more important things than style in 
her estimation Never would she willingly 
have appeared conspicuously old-fashioned, 
however. She still liked to think intensely 


172 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


while dressing and so would have one of her 
girls “look her over” lest something should 
not be right about her. 

Never could she be induced to take the time 
to sit for her portrait. Only dim daguerreo¬ 
types and an ivory miniature were made dur¬ 
ing her life. Hers was a beautiful soul which 
reflected in her expressive face rather than 
beautiful features. 

“She fascinated me from my first acquaint¬ 
ance and I found no fault in her,” was one 
person’s comment and it might have applied 
to all who knew and loved her. 


XIV 


THE END OF A CONSECRATED LIFE 

Little did those who knew and loved Miss 
Lyon realize that the evening of life which she 
had faced on her fiftieth birthday would be so 
very short for her. Her day had been full. 
She would not have wished to ever sit idly 
amid the shadows of too long an evening. 

It was in September, 1848, that she went 
to Springfield for a day’s shopping. While 
walking on the street she met an old pupil 
whom she had not seen for many years. She 
was then married. 

“My dear!” exclaimed Miss Lyon, “how 
very glad I am to see your face again!” 

“But, Miss Lyon, if only you might know 
what this meeting with my dear teacher means 
to me. You simply must come home with me 
for tea. Mr. Winslow and I sail for India 
to-morrow.” 

“I will. I am sure our meeting is Provi¬ 
dential,” Miss Lyon replied. 

173 


174 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

There were other guests at the Winslows’. 
At the table Miss Lyon was introduced to a 
gentleman whose name struck her as strangely 
familiar. 

“Can it be that we have met before?” she 
inquired. 

“Certainly we have, Miss Lyon,” the gen¬ 
tleman replied. There was a twinkle in his 
eye. 

“I meet a great many people. I am sorry 
to have forgotten the occasion of our meet¬ 
ing,” she apologized. “Perhaps you can re¬ 
fresh my memory?” 

“I am sure that I can—although it has been 
many years since we parted. We were both 
pupils at Ashfield Academy, Miss Lyon. I 
was only a young lad at the time. I would 
not expect you to remember me, were it not 
that we both took part in such an important 
production. Surely you have not forgotten 
your ‘little Moses’ in ‘Christianity in India’? 
As my mother you placed me in the bulrushes.” 

Then the floodgates of memory were un¬ 
locked. Miss Lyon’s face shone—her voice 
shook in the excitement of recalling scene after 
scene at Sanderson Academy. All at the table 


MARY LYON 175 

were struck with her animation. It was a 
sunny occasion. 

“How thankful I ought to be,” she ex¬ 
claimed, “for the incidents that have revived 
these pleasant portions of my life! This was 
unexpected. My duties for years have been 
so urgent and my cares so pressing, as to shut 
out the past from my thoughts. I recall as 
fresh as yesterday the winter scenes in my 
Ashfield and Buckland schools.” 

“And I recall the wonderful pupil who mas¬ 
tered a Latin grammar almost overnight,” re¬ 
plied her old schoolmate. “I though you were 
wonderful even then.” 

“Those who have gone forth from that quiet 
retreat have brightened, and cheered, and 
blessed the pathways which they have trod,” 
Miss Lyon continued. “One of the sources 
of happiness in heaven will be meeting old 
friends.” 

“Your pupils are going to participate in this 
joy from all quarters of the globe, and it must 
be pleasant for you to think of it,” Mrs. Wins¬ 
low replied. 

Miss Lyon took her hand impulsively. 

“Yes, I often think of the happiness of be- 


176 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


ing permitted to welcome one after another, 
as they finish their toils on earth, to the rest 
of heaven,” she said, smiling. 

“How strange,” returned her former pupil, 
“to hear you speak so freely of heaven! It 
was always an earnest desire of mine that you 
should in some of your morning exercises at 
school. You always spoke then of duty, of 
action; of present duties and present action. 
You appeared to have no time for it.” 

Miss Lyon smiled again. “So it was. I had 
no time. But I am changed now.” Then she 
told of her fiftieth birthday and of the feelings 
it had brought with it. “A half century to 
look back upon!” she exclaimed. “My day 
has gone, its evening has come. I think of 
heaven, and I do love to think of those who, 
I trust, are gathered there—of their joys.” 

She parted from that little group of friends 
refreshed and glowing with happiness. 

For two years after her fiftieth birthday 
Miss Lyon continued her duties at Mount 
Holyoke with little or no vacation. But in 
January, 1849, she yielded to Mrs. Porter’s 
persuasion and went to Monson for a visit. 


MARY LYON 


177 


Soon after her arrival she wrote the following 
letter to her niece Abigail Moore Burgess: 

“January 20, 1849. 

“My very dear niece: 

“Here I am again with my dear Mrs. Porter. 
She proposes that we write you a joint letter. 
... I have scarcely had a vacation in two 
years. But I am now enjoying an old-fash¬ 
ioned vacation of real rest in this sweetest of 
all resting places. . . . Miss Hazen proposed 
to stay and take all the care and let me go 
away. I decided to accept. I began a week 
before to arrange all things. I had my plans 
made out in writing and left all behind me. 
Here I can quietly read, write letters, ride and 
visit, with nothing to annoy me and scarcely 
a thought of home. ... I had many things 
planned and arranged last year for this, so this 
proves one of the easiest years. Such years 
come along now and then. 

“My health has been unusually good this 
year, so far. . . . But at all times, whether I 
have more or less strength, I feel that I am fast 
hastening to my eternal home. . . . Still, I 
trust I may have a little more work to do on 
earth, and that little may I do faithfully. . . . 

“My work is made up, as you know, of an 
endless number of duties, of nameless little¬ 
nesses, interwoven, if not confused together. 
But still my work is a good work. . . . Every 
hour I feel not only need of divine aid to lead 


178 FAMOUS AMERICANS 


me, but of an internal, divine power, carrying 
me along the right path. When I am at my 
work, sometimes called unexpectedly and sud¬ 
denly from one thing to another, I whisper in 
my heart, ‘Lord help me to be patient, help me 
to remember, help me to be faithful.’ ” 

To a friend she wrote: “During the vaca¬ 
tion (in the autumn), I thought I might 
meet you to journey together somewhere 
among the mountains and in the quiet valleys of 
New England. So you see that I am calcu¬ 
lating on quite a resting time next autumn 
myself.” 

Miss Lyon returned to South Hadley 
greatly refreshed. Almost at once she was 
called upon for “a little more work” and the 
exercise of all her reserve strength. One of 
the seniors was taken seriously ill. Symptoms 
developed which had been present during fatal 
epidemics in many parts of the country a few 
years before. Influenza at the start devel¬ 
oped into erysipelas. Miss Lyon sent at once 
for the father and sister of the sick girl. The 
word was carried to New Hampshire by spe¬ 
cial messenger. She did not spare her own 
strength night or day. 


MARY LYON 


179 


When Miss Lyon found that, in spite of the 
use of every precaution to prevent the spread 
of the disease among the students, there was 
a feeling of panic, she called them together in 
the chapel. She tried to comfort their fears 
with the assurance that she had no feeling of 
uneasiness. Work would go on as before, she 
told them, but any who wished were free to 
go home. Her own wonderful courage calmed 
the excited girls; her tender words reassured 
them. Very few went away. 

“No pen can describe the wonderful beauty 
of her chapel talks during that last week she 
was with us,” one of the students wrote after¬ 
wards. It was then that she uttered the words, 
“Shall we fear what God is about to do? There 
is nothing in the universe that I fear, but that 
I shall not know all my duty or shall fail to 
do it.” 

The senior’s sister reached Mount Holyoke 
just before she passed away. Her father was 
too late to find his daughter alive. This added 
to Miss Lyon’s grief. She was worn out her¬ 
self and suffering from a cold and headache. 
She slept but little. Then came the sad news 
that one of her beloved nephews had taken his 


180 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

own life. The shock led to a serious illness. 
At first she showed mild symptoms of the same 
disease which had claimed the senior. She 
grew steadily worse. Much of the time she 
lay unconscious. Once she roused and whis¬ 
pered, “I should love to come back to watch 
over the seminary, but God will take care of 
it.” These were her last words. On March 
5, 1849, she died. 

“Like the blotting out of the sun at mid¬ 
day,” was the passing of Mary Lyon. The 
news of it traveled throughout the world. But 
none who loved her could say that she was 
not ready to go. She had her plans in order 
and “God would take care of them.” 

They laid her to rest beside an oak south 
of the orchard. Faithfully to the end she had 
done her part. Upon the monument of white 
Italian marble, set up to mark her last resting 
place, were inscribed her own words, “There is 
nothing in the universe that I fear, but that I 
shall not know all my duty or shall fail to do 
it.” 


The farm-house on Putnam Hill has long 
since fallen into decay—only the cellar re- 


MARY LYON 


181 


maining to mark the spot where it once stood. 
Set in a boulder nearby is a bronze tablet. It 
states that on this spot Mary Lyon’s life on 
earth had its beginning. It was fifty-two years 
between that event and the date when she en¬ 
tered into the life beyond. No third tablet is 
needed to keep her memory fresh, but yet an¬ 
other was recently inscribed with the name of 
Mary Lyon. This hangs on the walls of the 
Hall of Fame—one of the first women’s names 
to be there inscribed—together with the names 
of America’s greatest statesmen, poets, au¬ 
thors, inventors, painters, sculptors, soldiers 
and physicians. She did not seek fame for her¬ 
self but she achieved it. 

Because Mary Lyon lived, the lives of men 
and women continue to be the richer. Inas¬ 
much as the cause of higher education for girls, 
as well as boys, succeeded, the lives of both have 
broadened. The college-bred girl or woman 
is the truer companion, wife or mother, because 
she is able to see far beyond the walls of her 
kitchen. 

The dreams of the little New England farm 
girl of the long ago have come true. 









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